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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
History
Tale
Tales
Morality

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.
Christopher Hitchens
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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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There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of little guy or silent majority rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.
Christopher Hitchens
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What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.
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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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
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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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The noble title of dissident must be earned rather than claimed it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
Christopher Hitchens
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My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.
Christopher Hitchens
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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
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What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs or surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or to the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes.
Christopher Hitchens
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It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer.
Christopher Hitchens
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There is no English surname, however ancient and dignified, that cannot instantly be improved by the prefix ‘Spanker’.
Christopher Hitchens
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The pornography of tough-mindedness, covert action, and preparedness for peace through strength has had a predictably hypnotic effect on the legislative branch, turning it from legal watchdog to lapdog.
Christopher Hitchens
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Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men for surrendering our 'godly gift' of reason when we cross their mental thresholds?
Christopher Hitchens
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For me, the life of the angler is an almost flawless example of how not to have a good time.
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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Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
Christopher Hitchens
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A rule of thumb with humor if you worry that you might be going too far, you have already not gone far enough. If everybody laughs, you have failed.
Christopher Hitchens
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To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
Christopher Hitchens