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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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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
Depends
Aesthetic
Ought
Nightmare
Days
Depend
Moral
Current
Whether
Improve
Austerity
Think
Currents
Sentiment
Thinking
Possibly
Prosperous
Christmas
Sentiments

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The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.
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I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I'm still quite robust.
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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.
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You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it's the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there's not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.
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Everyone in Iran is perceived to be a child with a paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Sufi elders. They're supposed to be grateful. They can never for a moment not be afforded this wonderful protection. The father who will never go away. The father who will never quit caring for them.
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All of life is a wager
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In one way, I suppose, I have been 'in denial' for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.
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The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made.
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This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine.
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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.
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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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Writing is what's important to me, and anything that helps me do that - or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation - is worth it to me. [It is] impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without that second bottle.
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I felt Clinton represented the worst of the 1960s.
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Teasing is very often a sign of inner misery.
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There is no English surname, however ancient and dignified, that cannot instantly be improved by the prefix ‘Spanker’.
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Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!
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The noble title of dissident must be earned rather than claimed it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
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I vote and I do jury duty.
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The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.
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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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