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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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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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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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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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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Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.
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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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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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As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.
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Inanity is pretending that Afghanistan will go away if we leave.
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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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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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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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The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.
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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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'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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Intellectuals never sound more foolish than when posing as the last civilised man.
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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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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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In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
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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!