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 HITCHENSOne must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going on.
More Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.
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Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.
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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 say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason.
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One of the most repellent spectacles at election times is the pretense of piety on the part of people running for office.
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The finest fury is the most controlled.
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How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
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Those who want to be offended don’t have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.
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My 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.
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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.
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Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, ‘Well, good on you. See you there.’
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What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.
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Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.
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Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
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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.
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Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.
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Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.
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Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
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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.
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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.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
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The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.
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The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God’s representative on earth.
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High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.
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To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation – is that good for the world?
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Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS