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Christopher Hitchens Quotes - Page 16

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What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs or surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker

What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs or surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or to the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes.

Christopher Hitchens
Heaven, Drug, Citizens
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.37, Atlantic Books Ltd

There's a big difference, as I'm sure you know, it's a slightly manneristic one, between people of the '60s and people of '68. Being a soixante-huitard - it's so nice to have a French word for it - is very different from just having happened to been a baby boomer in the '60s.

Christopher Hitchens
Baby, Nice, Differences

Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience.

Christopher Hitchens
Running, People, Risk
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.303, Atlantic Books Ltd

How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Kind, Bits
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.140, Atlantic Books Ltd

Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by socialists in a nonsocialist society.

Christopher Hitchens
Values
"The Free Market Cargo Cult (1990)". "For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports". Book by Christopher Hitchens, 1993.

I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.

Christopher Hitchens
Uganda, Korea, Eritrea

The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation, but the wrong culprit. Human sacrifices were made preeminently in times of epidemics, useless prayers were uttered, bogus miracles attested to, and scapegoats - such as Jews or heretics or witches - hunted down and burned.

Christopher Hitchens
Prayer, Ignorance, Sacrifice
Christopher Hitchens (2007). “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”, p.9, Da Capo Press

The thing about religion is that it's the first and the worst. The worst because it's the first.

Christopher Hitchens
Firsts, Worst
Source: www.avclub.com

If people I've never met or don't know say that what I've written or done or said means anything to them, then I'm happy to take it at face value, for once. It cheers me up.

Christopher Hitchens
Cheer, Mean, People

If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech.

Christopher Hitchens
Believe, Thinking, Political

Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.

Christopher Hitchens
Writing, Editors, Praise
Christopher Hitchens (2013). “Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship”, p.8, Atlantic Books Ltd

I think the cultural task is to separate our impulses and needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Desire, Tasks
Source: www.wanliss.com

I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Consensus Building, Meant To Be

Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.

Christopher Hitchens
Principles, Way, Individual
Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Why Orwell Matters”, p.83, Basic Books

I can't compose or play music; I'm not that fortunate. But I can write and I can talk and sometimes when I'm doing either of these things I realize that I've written a sentence or uttered a thought that I didn't absolutely know I had in me... until I saw it on the page or heard myself say it.

Christopher Hitchens
Writing, Play, Pages
Source: www.wanliss.com

The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both.

Christopher Hitchens
Loss, Trade, Eternal Vigilance

I could be spending time looking through a telescope or into a microscope and finding out the most extraordinary, wonderful things, but people say faith can move mountains. Faith in what, by the way? You haven't said.

Christopher Hitchens
Moving, People, Mountain
Source: www.wanliss.com

It must be obvious to anyone who can think at all that the charges against the Hussein regime are, as concerns arsenals of genocidal weaponry, true.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Hussein, Regimes
"Christopher Hitchens Quits Nation". www.scotsman.com. September 27, 2002.

Many of the points made by the antiwar movement have been consciously assimilated by the Pentagon and its lawyers and advisers. Precision weaponry is good in itself, but its ability to discriminate is improving and will continue to improve. Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect.

Christopher Hitchens
Troops, Bombs, Movement
Simon Cottee, Thomas Cushman, Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left”, p.5066, NYU Press

In particular, it is absurd to hope to banish envy of other people's possessions or fortunes, if only because the spirit of envy can lead to emulation and ambition and have positive consequences.

Christopher Hitchens
Ambition, People, Envy
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.74, Atlantic Books Ltd

Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, "Created sick Commanded to be well." And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail.

Christopher Hitchens
Sick, Lines, Quiet
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.57, Basic Books

Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.

Christopher Hitchens
Cancer, Self, Temptation

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

Christopher Hitchens
Philosophy, Issues, Way

There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Feel Better, Thinking
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.150, Atlantic Books Ltd

I don't think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it nourishes the brain.

Christopher Hitchens
Silly, Thinking, Personality
Source: www.wanliss.com

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