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Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

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
Enough
Never
Time
Oddly
Wasted
Arguing
Faithful
Spent
Almost

More quotes by 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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I don't think Romney is wacky at all, but religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things. Left on his own, Romney would never have said something like the Garden Of Eden was in Missouri, and will be again.
Christopher Hitchens
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This walking business is overrated: I mastered the art of doing it when I was quite small, and in any case, what are taxis for?
Christopher Hitchens
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The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.
Christopher Hitchens
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Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.
Christopher Hitchens
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It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.
Christopher Hitchens
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You don't say 'they all do it' unless you know you've been doing it too.
Christopher Hitchens
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One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea what was going on.
Christopher Hitchens
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If you can charm everyone it means you don't care about anyone in particular.
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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Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.
Christopher Hitchens
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I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.
Christopher Hitchens
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Happiness is fleeting and life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us.
Christopher Hitchens
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I appear as a skeptic, who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, all discovery and all innovation.
Christopher Hitchens
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My own opinion is enough for me. And I claim the right to defend it against any consensus, any majority anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.
Christopher Hitchens
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Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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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
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Take the risk of thinking for yourself
Christopher Hitchens
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Doubt, skepticism, innovation, and inquiry are the only means by which wonder, beauty, awe, and symmetry will be discovered.
Christopher Hitchens