Quote

There are people who cannot forget, as neither do I, the lesson of the years of the Indochina War. Which was, first, that the state is capable of being a murderer. A mass murderer, and a conspirator and a liar.

Christopher Hitchens

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
States
Neither
Firsts
Lessons
Conspirator
First
Mass
Indochina
Years
Capable
Conspirators
People
State
Liar
Forget
Murderer
War
Liars
Cannot
Lesson

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

Image
One can't live without fear, it's a question of what is your attitude towards fear? I'm afraid of a sordid death. I'm afraid that I will die in an ugly or squalid way, and cancer can be very vigorous in that respect.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I personally want to do death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
We know that our life is essentially tragic. I'm absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, Why didn't you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I felt Clinton represented the worst of the 1960s.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
It's called faith because it's not knowledge.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Writing is what's important to me, and anything that helps me do that - or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation - is worth it to me. [It is] impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without that second bottle.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, Created sick Commanded to be well. And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
In some ways I feel sorry for racists and for religious fanatics, because they so much miss the point of being human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
There's no Hell mentioned in the Old Testament. The punishment of the dead is not specified there. It's only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that the idea of eternal torture for minor transgressions is introduced.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The best blended Scotch in the history of the world - which was also the favourite drink of the Iraqi Baath Party, as it still is of the Palestinian Authority and the Libyan dictatorship and large branches of the Saudi Arabian royal family - is Johnnie Walker Black. Breakfast of champions, accept no substitute.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.
Christopher Hitchens