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Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

Christopher Hitchens

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.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Believe Faith Freedom Oneself Position Reveal Truth
Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

End Limitation Praise
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
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
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
So there’s nothing more vulgar than the sound of someone saying, God Bless America, someone who doesn’t really believe it, but he thinks it will make him look good to other people. I think it’s the most nauseating spectacle.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Appearance Believe Myself Sound Talk Thinking
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.’
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Death People Prayer See Yourself
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
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
Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Existence High Principle
I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Hate Myself Religion World
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
If you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don’t think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Bad Capital Dangerous Global Thinking Yourself
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Ability Authority Essential Oneself Religion
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
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

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

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Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

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