Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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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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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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That phrase, 'loss of innocence,' has become stale with overuse and diminishing returns; no other culture is so addicted to this narcissistic impression of itself as having any innocence to lose in the first place.
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In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
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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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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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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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Inanity is pretending that Afghanistan will go away if we leave.
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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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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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The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.
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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 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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My challenge is really to say, 'Can you name me a moral action or a statement that has been made by a believer that couldn't have been made by a non-believer?'
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All the excitements of a prohibited book had their usual effect, one of which, as always, is to expose the fact that the censors don't know what they are talking about.
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There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of 'little guy' or 'silent majority' rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.
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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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Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
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Intellectuals never sound more foolish than when posing as the last civilised man.
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The idea that God speaks to some illiterate merchant warlord in Arabia, and he’s able to write this down perfectly and it contains the answers to all - don’t waste my time with that bulls**t. Also, the archangel Gabriel speaks only Arabic, it seems? Crap.
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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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...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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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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In today's Britain, the idea that there could be a Constitution more powerful - and even sacrosanct - than any crowned head or elected politician (thus abolishing the false antithesis between hereditary monarchs and capricious presidents) is thought of as a breathtakingly new and daring idea.