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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

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
It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Experiment Failure Hope Production Transformation
Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Argument Enough Faith Time Wasted Time
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
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Appearance Father Heaven Herself Repeat
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Faith Noise People Research Science White
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Certain Divine Infant Ourselves Person
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
Take the risk of thinking for yourself.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Risk Self Love Thinking Yourself
In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Goodness Moral Ordinary Religion Universe Yourself
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
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 HITCHENS

Allow Children Different Quite Reason Religious World
I’m a member of no party. I have no ideology. I’m a rationalist. I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that’s all around us.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Member Myself Party Science Struggle
Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Existence Human Survive War
I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Each Other Faith Leaving Myself
I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

God Instruction Planet Time Wasted Time 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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Christopher Hitchens Quotes