Quote

I can never quite decide whether the anti-Columbus movement is merely risible or faintly sinister. It is sinister, though, because it is an ignorant celebration of stasis and backwardness, with an unpleasant tinge of self-hatred.

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
Quite
Unpleasant
Though
Celebration
Whether
Anti
Backwardness
Self
Ignorant
Tinge
Never
Decide
Stasis
Hatred
Faintly
Merely
Sinister
Movement
Columbus

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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.
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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.
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One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.
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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.
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I don’t have a body, I am a body.
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The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.
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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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Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don't do any good, but they don't necessarily do any harm. It's touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I've got my just desserts.
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My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.
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Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.
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The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
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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.
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Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.
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I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
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I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise.
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And yet, I wake up every day to a sensation of pervading disgust and annoyance. I probably ought to carry around some kind of thermometer or other instrument, to keep checking that I am not falling prey to premature curmudgeonhood.
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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.
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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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Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.
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A rule of thumb with humor if you worry that you might be going too far, you have already not gone far enough. If everybody laughs, you have failed.
Christopher Hitchens