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Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing

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
People
Food
Greeks
Called
Buzz
Reading
Slight
Help
Tedious
Less
Greek
Helping
Alcohol
Makes
Provide
Writing
Inspiration
Bland

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

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I'm a member of no party. I have no ideology. I'm a rationalist. I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that's all around us.
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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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I felt Clinton represented the worst of the 1960s.
Christopher Hitchens
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[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.
Christopher Hitchens
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The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.
Christopher Hitchens
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There is almost no country in Africa where it is not essential to know to which tribe, or which subgroup of which tribe, the president belongs. From this single piece of information you can trace the lines of patronage and allegiance that define the state.
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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Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like.
Christopher Hitchens
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My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.
Christopher Hitchens
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Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, Created sick Commanded to be well. And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail.
Christopher Hitchens
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The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
Christopher Hitchens
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It's called faith because it's not knowledge.
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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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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Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.
Christopher Hitchens
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No moral person would do such a thing unless they thought it was divinely warranted.
Christopher Hitchens
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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.
Christopher Hitchens
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I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.
Christopher Hitchens
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Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever.
Christopher Hitchens
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Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.
Christopher Hitchens