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Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.

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
Alone
Unhappiness
Glands
Bigs
Disorder
Reproductive
Certain
Designed
Recipe
Combination
Committee
Meant
Recipes
Evolution
Committees
Lead
Apparently
Small
Organs
Lobes

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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?
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Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.
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In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don't kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.
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To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.
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The faithful believe that certain truths have been 'revealed.' The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic.
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In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.
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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.
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Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.
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Exceptional claims, require exceptional evidence.
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The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both.
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The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me.
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I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
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What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.
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Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.
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Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard-or try to turn back-the measureable advances that we have made.
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I'm very happy by myself - I'm lucky in that way - if I've got enough to read and something to write about and a bit of alcohol for me to add an edge, not to dull it.
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.
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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.
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Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.
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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.
Christopher Hitchens