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 HITCHENSI 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 HITCHENSTake the risk of thinking for yourself.
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSWe have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSEverybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSThe easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God’s representative on earth.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSNo one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI 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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSThe 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 HITCHENSReligion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSThe one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSEven if I accepted that Jesus – like almost every other prophet on record – was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI’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 HITCHENSThe secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSShe’s got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS