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History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.

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
Tale
Tales
Morality
History

More quotes by 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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You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.
Christopher Hitchens
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I would say that if you don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you're really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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You can't have occupation and human rights.
Christopher Hitchens
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I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.
Christopher Hitchens
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I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?
Christopher Hitchens
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The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.
Christopher Hitchens
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A bit of a stomach give a chap a position in society.
Christopher Hitchens
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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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There is no reason at all why there aren't enough people to guard New Orleans and to help stabilise Baghdad.
Christopher Hitchens
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If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.
Christopher Hitchens
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Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever.
Christopher Hitchens
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I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.
Christopher Hitchens
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The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.
Christopher Hitchens
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I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
Christopher Hitchens
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I can never quite decide whether the anti-Columbus movement is merely risible or faintly sinister. It is sinister, though, because it is an ignorant celebration of stasis and backwardness, with an unpleasant tinge of self-hatred.
Christopher Hitchens
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I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.
Christopher Hitchens
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It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.
Christopher Hitchens
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Hero­ism breaks its heart, and ide­al­ism its back, on the intran­si­gence of the cred­u­lous and the mediocre, manip­u­lated by the cyn­i­cal and the corrupt.
Christopher Hitchens