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Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.

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
Morality
Gets
Religion

More quotes by 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 apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
Christopher Hitchens
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I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.
Christopher Hitchens
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Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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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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A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.
Christopher Hitchens
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I was taught very early on that the state can be, and is, a liar and a murderer.
Christopher Hitchens
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Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.
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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Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.
Christopher Hitchens
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I'd like to prove to other people that it's not the end of everything to be diagnosed with cancer.
Christopher Hitchens
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Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.
Christopher Hitchens
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If you can charm everyone it means you don't care about anyone in particular.
Christopher Hitchens
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We know that our life is essentially tragic. I'm absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, Why didn't you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind.
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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People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.
Christopher Hitchens
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In some ways I feel sorry for racists and for religious fanatics, because they so much miss the point of being human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so.
Christopher Hitchens
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There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz.
Christopher Hitchens