Quote

Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.

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
Friend
Believe
Bogus
Cease
False
Allow
Promise
Short

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

Image
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
Image
The noble title of dissident must be earned rather than claimed it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Do I fear death? No, I am not afraid of being dead because there's nothing to be afraid of, I won't know it. I fear dying, of dying I feel a sense of waste about it and I fear a sordid death, where I am incapacitated or imbecilic at the end which isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I don’t have a body, I am a body.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
In a Pyongyang restaurant, don't ever ask for a doggie bag.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
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.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
At Oxford one was positively encouraged to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Demands that you believe the impossible do not lead to peaceful outcomes.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
When I go to the clinic next and sit with a tube in my arm and watch the poison go in, I'm in an attitude of abject passivity. It doesn't feel like fighting at all it just feels like submitting.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don't do any good, but they don't necessarily do any harm. It's touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I've got my just desserts.
Christopher Hitchens