Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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We are not occupying Afghanistan, we are there as guests of a government, at their request.
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We had enough of people who think like you, that they know what god wants and that they've got god on their side. That they can tell us what to do or what to think in this way.
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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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I, for one, will not have the Vietcong insulted by any comparison to the forces of Zarqawi, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the criminal underworld now arrayed against us. These depraved elements are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge.
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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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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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Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.
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...those who say I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.
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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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Inanity is pretending that Afghanistan will go away if we leave.
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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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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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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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We have preachers and savants who dilate endlessly on the sanctity of family and childhood but who tolerate a system in which a casual observer can correlate a child's social origin with its physical well-being.
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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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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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One could happily make a case that more random civilians, and fewer fucking lawyers, should be on the court. But the only other thing to say about Miers is that she is a fucking lawyer.
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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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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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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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In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
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The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.
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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?
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If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.