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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

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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
Hurt
Radicals
Culture
Fetish
Country
Reactionaries
Make
Pose
Liberals
Radical
Brave
Nonconformists
Cry
Irrelevance

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There is no reason at all why there aren't enough people to guard New Orleans and to help stabilise Baghdad.
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The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his Joan of Arc when he said against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable.
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Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.
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A point, like a joke, is a terrible thing to miss.
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Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather cheering one.
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If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
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It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.
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You can't have occupation and human rights.
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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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In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don't kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.
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I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
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Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard-or try to turn back-the measureable advances that we have made.
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I'm very happy by myself - I'm lucky in that way - if I've got enough to read and something to write about and a bit of alcohol for me to add an edge, not to dull it.
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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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At Oxford one was positively encouraged to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied.
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And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.
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What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.
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I was taught very early on that the state can be, and is, a liar and a murderer.
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History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.
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