Quote

We are unlikely to cease making gods or inventing ceremonies to please them for as long as we are afraid of death, or of the dark, and for as long as we ­persist in self-­centeredness. That could be a lengthy stretch of time.

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
Time
Afraid
Ceremonies
Please
Inventing
Dark
Ceremony
Religion
Stretch
Making
Unlikely
Death
Persist
Self
Gods
Long
Cease
Lengthy

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

Image
The thing about religion is that it's the first and the worst. The worst because it's the first.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The fact is: It's true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Haven't we all heard some irritating person saying that if so-and-so is elected, then he/she is absolutely definitely leaving the country? There must be some reason why it is mainly liberals who tend to say this, but the chief thing to note about the promise is that it is usually an empty one.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Religion, it is true, still possesses the huge if cumbersome and unwieldy advantage of having come first.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
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
Image
I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
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
Image
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I wrote a piece from North Korea called Visit to a Small Planet which is a line I stole from a play of Gore Vidal's, because it did seem to me as if I had left this planet completely to go on this visit to the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and it was as if coming back from another spatial body altogether.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things.
Christopher Hitchens
Image
I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do
Christopher Hitchens
Image
Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.
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