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The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

Christopher Hitchens

Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Appreciation Favorite Irony Virtue
I’m not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Atheist Harmful Hold Maintain Myself Positive Religion Truth
Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

End Limitation Praise
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Evidence Faith Give Up Ourselves Poison Reason Religion Respect
I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Each Other Faith Leaving Myself
I’m not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and give them some say in how many children they’ll have, immediately the floor will rise.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Children Feminism Reproduction Rise Woman
Those who want to be offended don’t have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Offend Right
I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Form Love Myself Reason Respect Sex Sexuality
The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Definition Management Oneself Race
There is no such thing as closure, and it wouldn’t be worth having if it were available, because all it would mean is that something that was quite an important part of you had gone numb.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Available Important Quite Worth Yourself
Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Important Microscope Offering Thankful
The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Correct Essence Quite Rule True
Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Astronomy End Philosophy Place Religion
In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Goodness Moral Ordinary Religion Universe Yourself
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Ability Authority Essential Oneself Religion
The faithful believe that certain truths have been ‘revealed.’ The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Believe Faith Freedom Oneself Position Reveal Truth

The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

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The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

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Popular Authors

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