If the Qur’an was the word of God, it had been dictated on a very bad day.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI’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.
More Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
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Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, ‘Well, good on you. See you there.’
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Those who want to be offended don’t have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.
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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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If you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don’t think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.
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Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony.
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I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.
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Who are your favourite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
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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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The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
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There’s been some research in cognitive science, I’m told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it’s white noise.
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To the dumb question, ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‘Why not?’
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Jesus makes large claims for his heavenly father but never mentions that his mother is or was a virgin, and is repeatedly very rude and coarse to her when she makes an appearance.
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The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God’s representative on earth.
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Religion makes kind people say unkind things: “I must prove my faith, so mutilate the genitals of my children.” They wouldn’t do that if God didn’t tell them to do so.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS