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You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?

Christopher Hitchens

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Christopher Hitchens
Age: 62 †
Born: 1949
Born: April 13
Died: 2011
Died: December 15
Author
Autobiographer
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Political Scientist
Writer
Portsmouth
England
Christopher Eric Hitchens
Arab
Polish
Greek
English
American

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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I don’t have a body, I am a body.
Christopher Hitchens
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We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we're going to die, which gives us a lot to think about, and we have a need for, what I would call, the transcendent or the numinous or even the ecstatic that comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't respond to things of that sort.
Christopher Hitchens
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Everyone in Iran is perceived to be a child with a paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Sufi elders. They're supposed to be grateful. They can never for a moment not be afforded this wonderful protection. The father who will never go away. The father who will never quit caring for them.
Christopher Hitchens
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Who are your favourite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
Christopher Hitchens
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The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.
Christopher Hitchens
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The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.
Christopher Hitchens
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I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.
Christopher Hitchens
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I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do
Christopher Hitchens
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There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.
Christopher Hitchens
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Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
Christopher Hitchens
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It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.
Christopher Hitchens
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To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.
Christopher Hitchens
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All this could be part of a plan. There is no way an atheist can prove it’s not. But it’s some plan, isn't it? With mass destruction, pitiless extermination, annihilation going on all the time. And all of this set in motion on a scale that’s absolutely beyond our imagination, in order that the pope can tell people not to jerk off.
Christopher Hitchens
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Religion fosters servility and solipsism.
Christopher Hitchens
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One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.
Christopher Hitchens
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You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it's the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there's not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.
Christopher Hitchens
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Exceptional claims, require exceptional evidence.
Christopher Hitchens
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Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren't always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.
Christopher Hitchens
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Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.
Christopher Hitchens
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Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
Christopher Hitchens