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

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

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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.
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I've been writing a lot about a new form of Russian imperialism. Actually, Russian Orthodox imperialism. It's very little remarked that the cement, the political, ideological cement of the Russian regime now, communism having collapsed and imploded, is increasingly a confessional one.
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One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.
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Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.
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The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one.
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I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.
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As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.
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What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.
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I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, 'He is not a lush.' That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, 'Look!'
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I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.
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The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity
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If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech.
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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.
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The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his Joan of Arc when he said against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable.
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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.
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Billy Graham is a boring, racist charlatan.
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The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
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Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded.
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Cheap booze is a false economy.
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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