Quote

Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.

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
Much
Although
Love
Second
Think
Turn
Thinking
Turns
Fleece
Like
Look
Shepherds
Firsts
Priesthood
Looks
Sheep
First
Meat

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
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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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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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Do I fear death? No, I am not afraid of being dead because there's nothing to be afraid of, I won't know it. I fear dying, of dying I feel a sense of waste about it and I fear a sordid death, where I am incapacitated or imbecilic at the end which isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of.
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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.
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We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.
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There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.
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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.
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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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Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.
Christopher Hitchens
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We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
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Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.
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The polls undoubtedly help to decide what people think, but their most important long-term influence may be on how people think. The interrogative process is very distinctly weighted against the asking of an intelligent question or the recording of a thoughtful answer.
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(Howard) Dean is a raving nut bag...a raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag...I and a few other people saw that he should be destroyed.
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A celebrity is well known for being well known. I'm relatively well known - but for what I've written and said, or so I fondly imagine.
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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
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It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer.
Christopher Hitchens
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There is an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and that person’s propensity to be impressed by the measurement of IQ.
Christopher Hitchens
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Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam!
Christopher Hitchens