The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
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.
More Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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The discovery there is no god is a great relief, because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.
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She’s got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.
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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.
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Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
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It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.
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The 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.
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I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
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No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.
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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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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.
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The violence in the Bible is appalling.
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Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of ‘the flock.
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Arguments that explain everything explain nothing.
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The noble title of “dissident” must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
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The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS






