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Christopher Hitchens Quotes about Atheist

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

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

Christopher Hitchens
Inspirational, Wisdom, Atheist

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Science, Religion

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.

Christopher Hitchens
Daughter, Running, Atheist
"Hitch-22: A Memoir". Book by Christopher Hitchens, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 20, 2010.

I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Real, Godly

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Atheism, Cognitive Dissonance
Christopher Hitchens (2007). “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”, p.480, Da Capo Press

Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Atheism, Christianity
Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.38, Atlantic Books Ltd

In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Order, Holocaust

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

Christopher Hitchens
Atheist, Stupid, Racism

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