Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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It was an axiom of 'containment' that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. 'Neutralism' was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological - and sometimes military - pressure to fall into line.
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Even if the U.S. doesn't attack Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion.
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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.
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Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!
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In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
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It’s a very vulgar, arithmetical, pragmatic way of arguing anyway. If you do that, then get the facts and figures wrong, well then you’re really fucked. You’re fucked twice.
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George W. Bush is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.
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When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul.
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Hannity-'I am a believer. I believe in a creator.' Hitchens-'And that's where it stops, or you think this creator cares about you too?'
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The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.
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It Obama's Nobel peace prize would be like giving someone an Oscar in the hope that it would encourage them to make a decent motion picture.
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There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz.
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Every campaign, Garry Wills once wrote, 'taught Nixon the same lesson: mobilize resentment against those in power.' History taught the same to many conservative and reactionary populist movements, whose real attitude to those in power and authority was one of a servile, envious, vicarious adoration.
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The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. 'Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process?'
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The progress that's made … in any argument or in any discussion is by confrontation. That's a dialectical fact. People say 'oh let's have less heat and more light,' fatuously. There's only one source of light. It happens to be heat.
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Inanity is pretending that Afghanistan will go away if we leave.
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Intellectuals never sound more foolish than when posing as the last civilised man.
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Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam!
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The best case scenario is a rapid attack by precision-guided weapons, striking Saddam's communications in the first hours and preventing his deranged orders from being obeyed. Then a massive landing will bring food, medicine and laptop computers to a surging crowd of thankful and relieved Iraqis and Kurds. This could, in theory, all happen.
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'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals... But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed OUT of the Stone Age.
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If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
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Humans should not worship other humans at all, but if they must do so it is better that the worshipped ones do not occupy any positions of political power.
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Only the force of American arms, or the extremely credible threat of that force, can bring a fresh face to power.
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Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?