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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

The 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 HITCHENS

Mindset People Rejection Thinking Time
To the dumb question, ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‘Why not?’
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Cosmos Inspirational Question Return
We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Enough Life Live Time
I 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 HITCHENS

Key Language Learning Magic Myself Poetry
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
It’s called faith because it’s not knowledge.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Faith Knowledge Wisdom
Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Happiness Risk Thinking Truth Way Yourself
If the Qur’an was the word of God, it had been dictated on a very bad day.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Bad Day God Word
The gods that we’ve made are exactly the gods you’d expect to be made by a species that’s about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Expectation God Species
The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Discrimination Human Ourselves Slave Togetherness
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
Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

End Limitation Praise
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 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
Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Appreciation Favorite Irony Virtue
I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Humor Possible Thinking Tragedy

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Christopher Hitchens Quotes