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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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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
States
Liar
Murderer
Liars
Early
Taught
State

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.
Christopher Hitchens
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Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men for surrendering our 'godly gift' of reason when we cross their mental thresholds?
Christopher Hitchens
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The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.
Christopher Hitchens
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The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
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 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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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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We are unlikely to cease making gods or inventing ceremonies to please them for as long as we are afraid of death, or of the dark, and for as long as we ­persist in self-­centeredness. That could be a lengthy stretch of time.
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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A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.
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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There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.
Christopher Hitchens
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The fact is: It's true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.
Christopher Hitchens
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I'm quite convinced in my own mind that those who were arguing that [the need to intervene in Iraq] was a more immediate one than some believed - were I'm sure convinced that they were right on fact, I don't think they were making it up. So as to lying, I don't think it has been established that any lies were told.
Christopher Hitchens
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Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience.
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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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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For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.
Christopher Hitchens
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If you say the economy, you show you're stupid. There's no such thing as the economy. There is not a unity between the forces of production and the relations of production.
Christopher Hitchens
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If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.
Christopher Hitchens