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Christopher Hitchens Quotes - Page 19

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Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

Christopher Hitchens
Witty, Fun, Tables
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.306, Atlantic Books Ltd

Along with Islam and Christianity, Judaism does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Evil, Mad
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.59, Basic Books

In modern Greek history, there is a close relationship between national humiliation and political radicalization.

Christopher Hitchens
Political, Greek, Modern
Christopher Hitchens (1984). “Cyprus”, Quartet Books Ltd

I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise.

Christopher Hitchens
Journalist
Christopher Hitchens (2017). “Christopher Hitchens: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.104, Melville House

What if I pulled through and the pious faction contentedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating.

Christopher Hitchens
Prayer, What If, Factions
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.19, Atlantic Books Ltd

Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

Christopher Hitchens
Years, People, Alcohol

Billy Graham is a boring, racist charlatan.

Christopher Hitchens
Religion, Racist, Boring

Haven't we all heard some irritating person saying that if so-and-so is elected, then he/she is absolutely definitely leaving the country? There must be some reason why it is mainly liberals who tend to say this, but the chief thing to note about the promise is that it is usually an empty one.

Christopher Hitchens
Country, Leaving, Promise

Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.

Christopher Hitchens
Believe, Promise, Cease
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.82, Basic Books

The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.

Christopher Hitchens
Loneliness, Self, Bucks
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.67, Basic Books

I'm very happy by myself - I'm lucky in that way - if I've got enough to read and something to write about and a bit of alcohol for me to add an edge, not to dull it.

Christopher Hitchens
Writing, Alcohol, Lucky
"Christopher Hitchens - Q&A (2010) lyrics". Interview with Brian Lamb, lyrics.az. 2010.

Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.

Christopher Hitchens
Friendly, Guides, Harbors
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.72, Atlantic Books Ltd

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

Christopher Hitchens
Wish, Credit, Good Things
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.57, Atlantic Books Ltd

I don't envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

Christopher Hitchens
People, Envy, Respect People

Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in the air which made one think - made me think for many years - that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it.

Christopher Hitchens
New York, Thinking, Air
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.195, Atlantic Books Ltd

I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Soul, Body

Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.

Christopher Hitchens
Hate, War, Winning
Simon Cottee, Thomas Cushman, Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left”, p.5204, NYU Press

Most of the utopian community ideas actually are religious. They're based more on the idea of the monastery than the commune.

Christopher Hitchens
Religious, Ideas, Community
Source: www.heavenonearthdocumentary.com

The creation story is ridiculous garbage. And has given us a completely false picture of our origin as a species and the origins of the cosmos. If you want a good mythical story it would be the life of Socrates.

Christopher Hitchens
Garbage, Would Be, Cosmos
Source: www.wanliss.com

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.

Christopher Hitchens
People, Able, Used

A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target.

Christopher Hitchens
Order, Trying, Target

I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.

Christopher Hitchens
Scythes, Reaper, Bores
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.9, Hachette UK

[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.

Christopher Hitchens
Denial, Justification
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.185, Atlantic Books Ltd

My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.

Christopher Hitchens
Years, Chiefs, Consolation
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.35, Atlantic Books Ltd

I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me.

Christopher Hitchens
Disease, Decided
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.42, Atlantic Books Ltd

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