In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.
Christopher Hitchens
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON When you live in the present, the past is forgotten & the future takes care of itself. MANDY HALE Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a... JEANETTE CORON She was intimidating and all I could do was sit back on the couch as she paced back and forth, slowl... IN THE MAKING We have tears in our eyes As we wave our goodbyes, We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL Dive into the river of the present, but don't thrash about, go with the flow. JIM GENOVESE Savor the moment. Set a goal that you value and plan the steps to of getting there in a way that you... TERENCE T. GORSKI There is no such thing as objectivity. We are all just interpreting signals from the universe and tr... BONES THE DOCTOR IN THE PHOTO God is not impressed with what PRECEDES your name, but how you PROCEED in His Name." BJ NELSON When Luke had descended into the River Styx, he would've had to focus on something important that wo... RICK RIORDAN In the beginning, there was nothing and from nothing came our species then behold the dawn of music.... GARY F EVANS... To get over the past, you first have to accept that the past is over. No matter how many times you r... MANDY HALE She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word. DIANA WYNNE JONES The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being a... NEIL GAIMAN What is the Other?" they ask. The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ... PAULO COELHO Today is about the now, the moment you live in, so do now what you want to do SOTONYE ANGA Hail to you gods, on that day of the great reckoning. Behold me, I have come to you, without sin, wi... THE BOOK OF THE DEAD When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t... THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in! If it wer... J.R.R. TOLKIEN It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to h... RENEE AHDIEH Cease with the displays of false modesty. The entire palace knows about it." A feeling of warmt... RENEE AHDIEH Do you know why I adore roses?" Shahrzad untied the knot of his tikka sash with deliberate slowness.... RENEE AHDIEH Where were you?" Shahrzad tried to control the tremor in her voice. "Not where I should have b... RENEE AHDIEH As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun. RENEE AHDIEH We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness (often expressed... JOHN H. GROBERG Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives. THICH NHAT HANH The warm sound of her laughter stole through Khalid's skin, heating the coldest reaches of his soul. RENEE AHDIEH The things i know now, i never knew then. I wish i knew. SOTONYE ANGA It's not about what it is, it's about what it can become. DR. SEUSS And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually. JIMI HENDRIX That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere... J.D. SALINGER Here was one with an air of high nobility such as Aragorn at times revealed, less high perhaps, yet ... J.R.R. TOLKIEN To search the sands of a lost desert for truth and justice in this world today you might as well be ... GARY F EVANS... Now i know what it feels like being Ryan Bingham ARIEL SERAPHINO To have the time to reminisce is one of the futures gifts. Don't think to much, don't live to fast, ... CALVIN WILSON We are the masters of our own destinies we shape and mould our lives into to the circumstances surro... GARY F EVANS... An emotionally locked person refuses to let go of their sad memories and live in the now. KILROY J. OLDSTER All day long you sit and sew, Stitch life down for fear it grow, Stitch life down fo... EDITH SITWELL The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer ... ANGELA CARTER The profound ability to use aural and written language has enabled our species to collectively explo... KATHERINE VUCICEVIC No, sweet one. See, my precious: if we has it, then we can escape, even from Him, eh? Perhaps we gro... J.R.R. TOLKIEN For my generation, the bomber jacket is like a replacement for the suit jacket. It's a piece tha... THE WEEKND I'm the most boring person to talk to. THE WEEKND Fish die when they are out of water, and people die without law and order. THE TALMUD He who promises runs in debt. THE TALMUD For me, bomber jackets are smart, but they are also street and have a lot of attitude. THE WEEKND Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not ... THE BIBLE Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men. THE TALMUD Who is wise? One who learns from all. THE TALMUD The end result of wisdom is... good deeds. THE TALMUD Starting a band is the easy part. Once you've formed the band, you have to tell a story, and tha... THE EDGE Join the company of lions rather than assume the lead among foxes. THE TALMUD No labor, however humble, is dishonoring. THE TALMUD If one man says to thee, Thou art a donkey, pay no heed. If two speak thus, purchase a saddle. THE TALMUD Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow. THE TALMUD This is the punishment of a liar: he is not believed, even when he speaks the truth. THE TALMUD Prayer carries us half way to God, fasting brings us to the door of His palace, and alms-giving proc... THE KORAN When you teach your son, you teach your son's son. THE TALMUD This is the sum of all -- righteousness. In causing pleasure or in giving pain, in doing good or inj... THE MAHABHARTA The sun will set without thy assistance. THE TALMUD A person will be called to account on Judgment Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed... THE TALMUD Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend has a friend; be discreet. THE TALMUD Everyone whose deeds are more than his wisdom, his wisdom endures; and everyone whose wisdom is more... THE TALMUD Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies. THE TALMUD The deeper the sorrow the less the tongue has it. THE TALMUD A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished. THE TALMUD To break an oral agreement which is not legally binding is morally wrong THE TALMUD Man has three friends on whose company he relies. First, wealth - which goes with him only while goo... THE TALMUD Join the company of lions rather than assume the lead among
foxes. THE TALMUD The doctrines of religion are resolved into carefulness;
carefulness into vigorousness; vigorousnes... THE TALMUD Greater even than the pious man is he who eats that which is the fruit of his own toil; for scriptur... THE TALMUD Sin is sweet in the beginning, but bitter in the end. THE TALMUD A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife. THE BIBLE Know Ye not ... that the spirit of God dwelleth within you? THE BIBLE If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before [it hated] you. THE BIBLE Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ru... THE BIBLE Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment; and a babbler is no better. The words of a wise ma... THE BIBLE A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. THE BIBLE Strength and honor are her clothing: and she shall rejoice in time to come. THE BIBLE And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom... THE BIBLE And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way, a... THE BIBLE But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are ... THE BIBLE Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. THE BIBLE A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength. THE BIBLE Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! THE BIBLE Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of... THE BIBLE When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; Discretion shall pre... THE BIBLE For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their... THE BIBLE The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. Wisdom is... THE BIBLE So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou cri... THE BIBLE Wisdom is the principle thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. THE BIBLE Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good. THE BIBLE A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left. THE BIBLE There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged... THE BIBLE And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him. And, behold, there arose a great te... THE BIBLE Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see t... THE BIBLE
More Christopher Hitchens
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In one way, I suppose, I have been 'in denial' for some time, knowingly burning the candle a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Chemotherapy isn't good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When Caroline Kennedy managed to say 'you know' more than 200 times in an interview with the... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll b... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particula... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, pu... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-styl... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Read with care, George Orwell's diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our und... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for gra... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I'm crepuscular. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I regard anti-Semitism as ineradicable and as one element of the toxin with which religion has infec... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim under... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When I went back to Iraq again, after the liberation was complete, I was myself engaged on a sort of... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is o... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so e... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hun... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and supers... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On ever... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good fo... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affec... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks c... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He h... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to w... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS On page 607, alluding to the end of my first marriage (and carefully remembering to state that that'... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I can claim copyright only in myself, and occasionally in those who are either dead or have written ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was n... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I don't think Romney is wacky at all, but religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky thi... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite agai... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Even if I accepted that Jesus - like almost every other prophet on record - was born of a virgin, I ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A gentleman is never rude except on purpose - I can honestly be nasty sober, believe you me. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affec... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well, we can't say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-ch... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imper... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in p... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows t... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I didn't think Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. It used to worry me. I thought maybe I'm not pu... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When I go to the clinic next and sit with a tube in my arm and watch the poison go in, I'm in an... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from cele... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to st... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Chemotherapy isn't good for you. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks... 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CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Like the Nazis, the cadres of jihad have a death wish that sets the seal on their nihilism. The goal... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who ris... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possi... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a su... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Say 'Toronto' or 'Ontario,' and the immediate thought associations are with a somewh... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many p... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aun... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The violence in the Bible is appalling. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting 'O.K.' has deposed the more affirmative 'Yes,&... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most b... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There's a big difference, as I'm sure you know, it's a slightly manneristic one, between... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Sus... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made u... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion abou... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or t... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven't... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the ha... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert t... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn't even notice. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I don't consider myself to be that credulous. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It's not at all good when your cancer is 'palpable' from the outside. Especially when, a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be te... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms,... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialec... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The one unforgivable sin is to be boring CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never ag... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I'm not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the b... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every li... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful becaus... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instea... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatev... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS As I never tire of saying, heat is not the antithesis of light but rather the source of it. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS British diplomats and Anglo-American types in Washington have a near-superstitious prohibition on ut... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate onese... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front f... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in rememb... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Islamists will try to spoil everything for everyone. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn dir... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you di... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indi... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper an... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There can be no progress without head-on confrontation. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I vote and I do jury duty. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is ap... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelie... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had�... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I still think like a Marxist in many ways. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I think the materialist conception of history is valid. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A terrible thing has now happened to religion. Except in the places where it can still enforce itsel... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In this way he will draw men to him by the strong cords of their passions, made reason-proof by bein... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, l... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition’s chief victims are those persons who ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and to the longed-for momen... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A saving grace of the human condition (if I may phrase it like that) is a sense of humor. Many write... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Finally, I want to come to the question of sex. If anything proves that religion is not just man-mad... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, fo... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It is certain, that, in every religion, however sublime the verbal definition which it gives of its ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Believing then … that human life is actually worth living, one can combat one’s natural pessimis... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In January 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams to “encourage a hope that the human mind will s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS But there is a reason why religions insist so much on strange events in the sky, as well as on less ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS How sad to be a woman—not to know Aught of the glory of this breast of snow, All unconcerned to co... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Arguments for atheism can be divided into two main categories: those that dispute the existence of g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other word... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main pr... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There are, after all, atheists who say they wish the fable were true but are unable to suspend the r... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the sp... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or un... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and re... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John B... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS So, whenever the subject of Iraq came up, as it did keep on doing through the Clinton years, I had n... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, bu... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the childre... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The onl... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really no... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adher... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Naz... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS