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Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.

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
Compelled
Merit
Opposites
Virtue
Become
Exacted

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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I'm a single-issue voter, to get straight to the point. I'm really only interested in the candidate who's toughest and least apologetic when it comes to the confrontation with Islamic Jihadism.
Christopher Hitchens
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Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.
Christopher Hitchens
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In particular, it is absurd to hope to banish envy of other people's possessions or fortunes, if only because the spirit of envy can lead to emulation and ambition and have positive consequences.
Christopher Hitchens
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History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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I say 'Merry Christmas' to people I don't know, or to people I know are Christians. I say 'Happy Hanukkah' to people I know to be or suspect to be Jewish. And I don't say 'Happy Kwanzaa,' because I think African Americans get enough insults all year round.
Christopher Hitchens
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The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.
Christopher Hitchens
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MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.
Christopher Hitchens
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I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.
Christopher Hitchens
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You can't have occupation and human rights.
Christopher Hitchens
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A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.
Christopher Hitchens
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I've had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.
Christopher Hitchens
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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!'
Christopher Hitchens
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I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.
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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We have millions and millions of North Korean children totally stunted in mind and body and will have to be dealt with at some point, who have been raised to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god.
Christopher Hitchens
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Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.
Christopher Hitchens
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Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
Christopher Hitchens
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If you think all this is going on, all these gigantic fields of gravity and light with you in mind, then you really do have a self-centredness problem.
Christopher Hitchens
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What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance.
Christopher Hitchens