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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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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
Religion
Emancipation
Human
Beginnings
Humans
Essential
Things
Essentials
Laugh
Authority
Laughing
Ability
Mockery

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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There are two clocks ticking in Iran. One is the democracy movement clock which is ticking now faster than it was but it's got a lot of catching up to do. And then there's the clock that's ticking towards a nuclear weaponry.
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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.
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Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.
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Three words for those who want to put the Christ back in Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock.
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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.
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Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
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I joined a small but growing post-Trotskyite Luxembourgist sect.
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If you can charm everyone it means you don't care about anyone in particular.
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Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.
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Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.
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There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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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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Exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside the baggy garments.
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We know that our life is essentially tragic. I'm absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, Why didn't you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind.
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Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.
Christopher Hitchens
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For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going.
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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.
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For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.
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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