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Some 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 Hitchens

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

Enough Life Live Time
I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Burn Candle End Light Love Myself
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Evidence Information
I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Enough Myself Selfish Thinking Touch
Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of ‘the flock.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Image Pathetic Religion
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
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Essence Independent Mindset Thinking
Those who want to be offended don’t have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Offend Right
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
Today I want to puke when I hear the word ‘radical’ applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Islam Murder Radical Reaction World
I’m an atheist. I’m not neutral about religion, I’m hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Atheist Myself Organization Positive Religion Thinking
Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Belief God Religion Yourself
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
She’s got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Charm Director Imagination Kind
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Civilization Desire Ground Myself View
Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Demand Impossible Terrorism
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
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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Determination Enough Fantasy Mad Offend Possible
The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Correct Essence Quite Rule True
There is no such thing as closure, and it wouldn’t be worth having if it were available, because all it would mean is that something that was quite an important part of you had gone numb.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Available Important Quite Worth Yourself
The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Boredom Forgiveness Oneself Sin
The violence in the Bible is appalling.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

One Liner Religion Violence
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
The noble title of “dissident” must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Disagreement Risk Sacrifice Title
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
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

Some 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.

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Some 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Christopher Hitchens Quotes