If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSIf religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSMy own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSThe 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 HITCHENSI 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 HITCHENSShe’s got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSThere’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.
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSThe violence in the Bible is appalling.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI 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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSIt’s called faith because it’s not knowledge.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
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 HITCHENSSome people say that without God, people would give themselves permission to do anything. [Yet] only with God, only with the view that God’s on your side, can people give themselves permission to do things that otherwise would be called satanic.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSThanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSHow dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS