Christopher Hitchens Quotes

Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.

What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.

Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book.

All of life is a wager

Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony.

To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'

In my life, the only certainty is to be uncertain. I'm an unbeliever who believes in skepticism. I'm only sure about being unsure.

Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.

Anyone who can look me in the eye and say they prefer the story of Moses or Jesus or Mohammed to the life of Socrates is intellectually defective.

The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.

No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

The role of dissident is not, and should not be, a claim of membership in a communion of saints. In other words, the more fallible the mammal, the truer the example.

The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made.

The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God's representative on earth.

The moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage.

I personally want to "do" death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.

Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.

Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife.

Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.

A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends.

Happiness is fleeting and life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us.

Intellectuals never sound more foolish than when posing as the last civilised man.

There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.

There is an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and that person’s propensity to be impressed by the measurement of IQ.

Today I want to puke when I hear the word 'radical' applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.

Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

Its a matter of principle. If Jews born in Brooklyn have a right to a state in Palestine then Palestinians born in Jerusalem have a right to a state in Palestine.

Redemption is promised at the low price of surrender of your critical faculties.

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine

Religion fosters servility and solipsism.

If I was told to sacrifice something to prove my devotion to God, if I was told to do what all monotheists are told to do and admire the man who said 'Yes I'll gut my kid to show my love of God.'

The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

The finest fury is the most controlled.

Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.

In a Pyongyang restaurant, don't ever ask for a doggie bag.

One of the most repellent spectacles at election times is the pretense of piety on the part of people running for office.

It's [Los Angeles] mostly full of nonsense and delusion and egomania. They think they'll be young and beautiful forever, even though most of them aren't even young and beautiful now.

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.

The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.

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.

Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish.

It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.