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I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt, and I claim that right.

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
Claim
Treated
Claims
Hatred
Religion
Right
Think
Ridicule
Thinking
Contempt

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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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It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.
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I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.
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I wrote a piece from North Korea called Visit to a Small Planet which is a line I stole from a play of Gore Vidal's, because it did seem to me as if I had left this planet completely to go on this visit to the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and it was as if coming back from another spatial body altogether.
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What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs or surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or to the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes.
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The thing about religion is that it's the first and the worst. The worst because it's the first.
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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.
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At Oxford one was positively encouraged to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied.
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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.
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She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.
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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.
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I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.
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Take the risk of thinking for yourself
Christopher Hitchens
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As is so often the case with pieces that appear in the 'Onion,' I honestly could not decide whether this was a clever hoax or not - the arguments were almost exactly as stupid as the real thing.
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We become accomplices in evil every time we seek to soothe the unslakable appetites of the crime family that sits in Pyongyang.
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Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.
Christopher Hitchens
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Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.
Christopher Hitchens
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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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The violence in the Bible is appalling.
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I don't think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it nourishes the brain.
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