Authors:

Christopher Hitchens Quotes - Page 3

All Quotes Age Alcohol Art Atheism Atheist Attitude Belief Bullying Cancer Certainty Challenges Children Choices Christianity Church Concentration Country Crime Culture Democracy Desire Doubt Dying Earth Economy Envy Evidence Evil Evolution Feelings Fighting Fun Giving Greek Hate Hatred Heart Home Innovation Insecurity Inspirational Irony Islam Jesus Language Liars Lifetime Literature Losing Lying Memories Morality Motivational Opportunity Pain Philosophy Politics Praise Prayer Pride Progress Purpose Racism Reading Religion Risk Running Sacrifice School Science Security Sin Skepticism Slavery Son Soul Struggle Stupidity Suffering Surrender Teaching Terrorism Torture Trade Values Violence Virtue Waiting War Wife Writing
Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

Christopher Hitchens
Religion, Use, Principles

Those who are determined to be 'offended' will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.

Christopher Hitchens
Determined, Enough, Please
"Cartoon Debate: The case for mocking religion". www.slate.com. February 04, 2006.

Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

Christopher Hitchens
Believe, Awards, Eyebrows
"God Is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. April 25, 2007.

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. 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. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

Christopher Hitchens
Courage, Selfish, Science
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.140, Basic Books

Some people say that without God, people would give themselves permission to do anything. [Yet] only with God, only with the view that God's on your side, can people give themselves permission to do things that otherwise would be called satanic.

Christopher Hitchens
Views, Your Side, People

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?

Christopher Hitchens
Inspirational, Motivational, Atheist
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “Hitchens vs Blair”, p.9, Random House

The Russians are going to be expansionist whether we [USA] provoke them to it or not. Russians keep saying that we're trying to encircle them. In what sense does the independence of Kosovo, a land-locked province, former Yugoslavia, with no common border with Russia, threaten Russia with encirclement? This is insulting. In what sense does the independence of Georgia constitute an encirclement? What we are facing, and we may as well give it its right name, is what I called it earlier, a chauvinistic, theocratic in part, xenophobic Russian imperialism.

Christopher Hitchens
Land, Yugoslavia, Names
Source: www.npr.org

I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.

Christopher Hitchens
Light, Lovely, Ends

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Writing, Hands

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.

Christopher Hitchens
Stupid, Intelligent, Thinking

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
Simon Cottee, Thomas Cushman, Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left”, p.5207, NYU Press

To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Vintage, Doubt
Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.264, Atlantic Books Ltd

One of the most repellent spectacles at election times is the pretense of piety on the part of people running for office.

Christopher Hitchens
Running, People, Office
Source: www.npr.org

Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well.

Christopher Hitchens
Sick, Religion, Atheism
"Connect The World" with Becky Anderson, www.cnn.com. December 16, 2011.

He's a man [George W. Bush] who is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is a man who is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.

Christopher Hitchens
Men, Texas, Proud

The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.

Christopher Hitchens
Motivational, Atheist, Religion
Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.75, Atlantic Books Ltd

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

Christopher Hitchens
Thinking, Risk, Greatest Atheist

MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

Christopher Hitchens
Mother, Suffering, Empowerment
"Mommie Dearest" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. October 20, 2003.

Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife.

Christopher Hitchens
Country, Wife

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.

Christopher Hitchens
Book, Writing, Doe

I am 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. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.

Christopher Hitchens
Religious, Atheist, Thinking
Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.55, Basic Books

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

Christopher Hitchens
Selfish, Thinking, Touching

I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Ideas, Mind
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.299, Atlantic Books Ltd

If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Religion, Buried

We have no proof that Socrates ever existed. We only know from witnesses to his life that he did. Like Jesus, he never wrote anything down. It doesn't matter to me whether he did or not exist because we have his teachings, his method of thinking, and his extreme intellectual and moral courage.

Christopher Hitchens
Jesus, Teaching, Thinking
Source: www.wanliss.com

You May Also Like: