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Christopher Hitchens Quotes

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In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.

Christopher Hitchens
People, Religion, Wicked
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “Hitchens vs Blair”, p.10, Random House

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
Giving Up, Believe, Religion

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Christopher Hitchens
Inspirational, Wisdom, Atheist

The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God's representative on earth.

Christopher Hitchens
Religion, Earth, Way

Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Atheism, Conclusion

A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.

Christopher Hitchens
Children, Lying, Believe

Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.

Christopher Hitchens
Notebook, Christian, Names
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.82, Atlantic Books Ltd

It's called faith because it's not knowledge.

Christopher Hitchens

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
Religion, Half, Chimpanzees

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.

Christopher Hitchens
Children, Ignorance, Racism
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.44, Atlantic Books Ltd

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

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Religion, Atheism
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.253, Atlantic Books Ltd

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Stupid, Selfish

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
Religious, Children, Religion
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.209, Atlantic Books Ltd

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.

Christopher Hitchens
Inspirational, Dog, Cat
Christopher Hitchens (2007). “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”, p.16, Da Capo Press

[Religion] attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action.

Christopher Hitchens
Determination, Integrity, Self

Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.

Christopher Hitchens
Purpose, Morality, Stolen

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

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Texas, Risk
Christopher Hitchens' closing remarks at Hitchens-Dembski debate at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, www.youtube.com. November 18, 2010.

It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us - waking and sleeping - who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime, thought crime, just for what we think, who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick, as apparently we are - and then order us, on pain of eternal torture to be well again. To demand this, to wish this to be true is to wish to live as an abject slave.

Christopher Hitchens
Dream, Pain, Sleep

Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Believe, Animal
"Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (Holier Than Thou)". TV Series, May 23, 2005.

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
Laughing, Religion, Essentials
"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

Christopher Hitchens
Religion, Atheism, Important

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Silence, Stupidity
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.140, Basic Books

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.

Christopher Hitchens
Men, He Man, Guru
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.13, Atlantic Books Ltd

I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.

Christopher Hitchens
Hatred, Religion, Atheism

How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

Christopher Hitchens
Country, Atheist, Atheism

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