To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation – is that good for the world?

Christopher Hitchens

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How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Country Day Escape Present
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Ideal Life Live Modeling Reality Risk Woman
Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Choice Freedom Human Willing
Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of ‘the flock.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

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

Politics Religious Secularism Simplicity Truth
To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Break Off Conversation Friendship Remember Sin
I became a journalist because I didn’t want to have to rely on the press for information… I only read it to make sure of whatever everyone else thinks is going on, because it’s useful to know what people think is the news.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Information Journalism Myself News People Thinking
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
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
Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Existence High Principle
What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Form Stupidity Superstition Yourself
The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Anxiety Dangerous End Escape History Search Society
One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going on.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

History Oneself Religion Small
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Afraid Death Myself Quite Strong
Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Important Microscope Offering Thankful
It’s called faith because it’s not knowledge.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Faith Knowledge Wisdom
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
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.’
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Death People Prayer See Yourself
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
One of the most repellent spectacles at election times is the pretense of piety on the part of people running for office.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Election Oneself People Run Time
The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Book Holy Human Togetherness
I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Death Devil Enemy Myself Sympathy Time
The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that ‘if English was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Enough Goodness Government Myself Religion
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
We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Enough Life Live Time
What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Existence Friendship Value Yourself

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation – is that good for the world?

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To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation – is that good for the world?

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