I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSNo school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.
More Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
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I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.
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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.
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I’m not afraid of being dead, that’s to say there’s nothing to be afraid of. I won’t know I’m dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I’m alive in any way at all, that’ll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises.
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The gods that we’ve made are exactly the gods you’d expect to be made by a species that’s about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.
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The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.
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Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.
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The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
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I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.
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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.
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Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.
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The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.
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I learned that to be amusing was not to be frivolous and that language – always the language – was the magic key as much to prose as to poetry.
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I’m a member of no party. I have no ideology. I’m a rationalist. I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that’s all around us.
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The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS