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The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity

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
Certainty
Impossible
Humorless
Power
Rectitude
Must
Tedium
Never
Certainties
People
Uniformity
Ally
Allies

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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What if I pulled through and the pious faction contentedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating.
Christopher Hitchens
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The thing about religion is that it's the first and the worst. The worst because it's the first.
Christopher Hitchens
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There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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Three words for those who want to put the Christ back in Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock.
Christopher Hitchens
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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!
Christopher Hitchens
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You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?
Christopher Hitchens
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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
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The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.
Christopher Hitchens
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Today I want to puke when I hear the word 'radical' applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers the most plainly reactionary people in the world.
Christopher Hitchens
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Doubt, skepticism, innovation, and inquiry are the only means by which wonder, beauty, awe, and symmetry will be discovered.
Christopher Hitchens
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The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.
Christopher Hitchens
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There's no Hell mentioned in the Old Testament. The punishment of the dead is not specified there. It's only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that the idea of eternal torture for minor transgressions is introduced.
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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I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.
Christopher Hitchens
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It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and holy places so that his hated name can be forgotten.
Christopher Hitchens
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I can’t hope to convey the full effect of the embraces and avowals, but I can perhaps offer a crumb of counsel. If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. The difference made will almost certainly be more than you have calculated
Christopher Hitchens
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Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.
Christopher Hitchens
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I'm not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and give them some say in how many children they'll have, immediately the floor will rise.
Christopher Hitchens
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Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.
Christopher Hitchens