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Christopher Hitchens Quotes - Page 2

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My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.

Christopher Hitchens
Views, Lunatic Asylums, Planets
"God Is Not Great". Book by Christopher Hitchens, www.theguardian.com. 2011.

The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me.

Christopher Hitchens
Jesus, Texas, Taught

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Science, Religion

People are frightened of death, and the central lie of all religion is that there’s a cure for this and an exception we’ve made in your own case: an eternal life offered if you make the right propitiations and the right abjections. Well, I’m sorry. I think that it's the height of immorality to lie to people like that. That’s why [religion] survives.

Christopher Hitchens
Sorry, Lying, Thinking

If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose it for what it is, a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are in the highest degree unscrupulous.

Christopher Hitchens
People, Religion, Degrees

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

Christopher Hitchens
Uplifting, Strong, Atheist
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.51, Atlantic Books Ltd

I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Waste, Planets
Source: www.wanliss.com

Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.

Christopher Hitchens
Belief

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

Christopher Hitchens
Animal, Patterns, Conspiracy
"God's Still Dead" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. August 20, 2007.

Here is my challenge. Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first - I have been asking it for some time - awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

Christopher Hitchens
Faith, Religious, Thinking
"An Atheist Responds" by Christopher Hitchens, www.washingtonpost.com. July 14, 2007.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

Christopher Hitchens
Hypocrite, People, Tolerance
"Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets'". Interview with Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. November 13, 2010.

Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.

Christopher Hitchens
Coward, Used, Fascists
Misattributed. "Christopher Hitchens Never Said That Memorable Line About Islamophobia" by Hemant Mehta, www.patheos.com. May 12, 2014.

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly 'holy text dictated by god' and show that they are man made and what you have to show [is] there internal inconsistencies and absurdities. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority... it is an indispensable thing people can call it blasphemy if they like, but if they call it that they have to assume there is something to be blasphemed - some divine work, well I don't accept the premise.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Men, Laughing

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

Christopher Hitchens
Lying, Independent, Thinking
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.3, Basic Books

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
Religious, Atheist, Atheism

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
Religious, Atheist, Mean
"Christopher Hitchens On Mother Theresa". Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 16, Number 4, www.webpages.uidaho.edu.

Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Sheep, Shepherds

Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard-or try to turn back-the measureable advances that we have made.

Christopher Hitchens
Running, Science, Important
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.268, Atlantic Books Ltd

God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.

Christopher Hitchens
God, Men, Civilization

Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.

Christopher Hitchens
Self, Korea, Abjection
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.64, Basic Books

Its a matter of principle. If Jews born in Brooklyn have a right to a state in Palestine then Palestinians born in Jerusalem have a right to a state in Palestine.

Christopher Hitchens
Principles, Brooklyn, Jerusalem

We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.

Christopher Hitchens
Discovery, World, Physics

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea of what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge. Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion.

Christopher Hitchens
Children, Order, Ideas
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.67, Atlantic Books Ltd

Religion has been an enormous multiplier of tribal suspicion and hatred.

Christopher Hitchens
Hatred, Enormous, Suspicion
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.30, Atlantic Books Ltd

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

Christopher Hitchens
Enemy, Devil, Renounce
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd

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