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Christopher Hitchens Quotes - Page 17

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The realization that American power could and should be used for the defense of pluralism and as a punishment for fascism came to me in Sarajevo a year or two later... That was an early quarrel between me and many of my

The realization that American power could and should be used for the defense of pluralism and as a punishment for fascism came to me in Sarajevo a year or two later... That was an early quarrel between me and many of my Nation colleagues, and it was also the first time I found myself in the same trench as people like Paul Wolfowitz and Jeane Kirkpatrick: a shock I had to learn to get over. 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
Real, Party, Thinking
Interview with Jamie Glazov, historynewsnetwork.org. December 23, 2003.

Intellectuals never sound more foolish than when posing as the last civilised man.

Christopher Hitchens
Men, Sound, Lasts
Christopher Hitchens (2002). “Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere”, p.268, Verso

The transformation of part of the northern part of this continent into "America" inaugurated a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation, and thus deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto, with or without the participation of those who wish they had never been born.

Christopher Hitchens
Opportunity, America, Innovation
"Minority Report". The Nation, October 19, 1992.

As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.

Christopher Hitchens
Embarrassment, Producers, Vulgar
"What Cindy Sheehan Really Wants" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. August 19, 2005.

I can never quite decide whether the anti-Columbus movement is merely risible or faintly sinister. It is sinister, though, because it is an ignorant celebration of stasis and backwardness, with an unpleasant tinge of self-hatred.

Christopher Hitchens
Self, Hatred, Ignorant
"Minority Report". The Nation, October 19, 1992.

One can't live without fear, it's a question of what is your attitude towards fear? I'm afraid of a sordid death. I'm afraid that I will die in an ugly or squalid way, and cancer can be very vigorous in that respect.

Christopher Hitchens
Attitude, Cancer, Ugly
"Christopher Hitchens discusses life, death, cancer and God in interview with Newsnight". Newsnight interview, www.bbc.co.uk. November 26, 2010.

It's no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don't have a body, I am a body.

Christopher Hitchens
Fun, Appreciate, Body
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.28, Atlantic Books Ltd

I wrote a piece from North Korea called Visit to a Small Planet which is a line I stole from a play of Gore Vidal's, because it did seem to me as if I had left this planet completely to go on this visit to the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and it was as if coming back from another spatial body altogether.

Christopher Hitchens
Korea, Play, Pieces
Source: www.abc.net.au

Totalitarian is a cliché, dictatorship is based on clichéd thinking, on very tried and tested uniform stuff. They don't mind that they're boring, they don't mind that they're obvious, their point is made.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Mind, Stuff
Source: www.abc.net.au

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has.

Christopher Hitchens
Children, Knowing, Expectations
"British writer Christopher Hitchens dies". "PM", www.abc.net.au. December 16, 2011.

It's amazing how relaxing it is not to claim you know more than you do. I'm surprised that those who claim to speak in the name of god don't take more advantage of this relief.

Christopher Hitchens
Names, Relief, Speak

In the early days of the December that my father was to die, my younger brother brought me the news that I was a Jew. I was then a transplanted Englishman in America, married, with one son and, though unconsoled by any religion, a nonbelieving member of two Christian churches. On hearing the tidings, I was pleased to find that I was pleased.

Christopher Hitchens
Christian, Brother, Atheist
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.317, Atlantic Books Ltd

Religion attacks us in our deepest integrity by saying we wouldn't be able to make a moral decision without it.

Christopher Hitchens
Integrity, Decision, Able

Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

Christopher Hitchens
Years, Forget

We become accomplices in evil every time we seek to soothe the unslakable appetites of the crime family that sits in Pyongyang.

Christopher Hitchens
Evil, Politics, Crime
"Kim Jong-il's Willing Accomplices" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. May 24, 2010.

I've been writing a lot about a new form of Russian imperialism. Actually, Russian Orthodox imperialism. It's very little remarked that the cement, the political, ideological cement of the Russian regime now, communism having collapsed and imploded, is increasingly a confessional one.

Christopher Hitchens
Writing, Political, Littles
Source: www.npr.org

Ruthless and arrogant though power can appear, it is only ever held by mere mammals who excrete and yearn, and who suffer from insomnia and insecurity. These mammals are also necessarily vain in the ­extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared.

Christopher Hitchens
Power, Insomnia, Insecurity
Christopher Hitchens (2001). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, Basic Books (AZ)

[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.

Christopher Hitchens
Careers, Culture, Citizens

It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and holy places so that his hated name can be forgotten.

Christopher Hitchens
Children, Growing Up, Revenge
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.1598, Atlantic Books Ltd

I don't say things like "the grace of God." All that's white noise to me, not because I'm an intellectual. For many people, it's gibberish. Likewise, the idea that the Koran was dictated by an archaic illiterate is a fantasy.

Christopher Hitchens
Ideas, White, People
Source: www.wanliss.com

The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his Joan of Arc when he said against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable.

Christopher Hitchens
Mean, Stupidity, Brilliant
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.57, Atlantic Books Ltd

I'm not that keen on the idea of being unconscious.

Christopher Hitchens
Ideas, Unconscious
"He Knew He Was Right" by Ian Parker, www.newyorker.com. October 16, 2006.

Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically instinctual conviction.

Christopher Hitchens
Writing, United States, Matter
Christopher Hitchens (1994). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.220, Verso

When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul.

Christopher Hitchens
Country, Children, Home
Simon Cottee, Thomas Cushman, Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left”, p.5073, NYU Press

North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born.

Christopher Hitchens
Korea, Bird, Singing
Source: www.abc.net.au

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