"Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?"
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Christopher Hitchens quotes (page 27 of 32)
626 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long."
Read quote
3 likes
"In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement."
Read quote
3 likes
"Jesus is Santa Claus for Adults."
Read quote
3 likes
"There's no Hell mentioned in the Old Testament. The punishment of the dead is not specified there. It's only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that the idea of eternal torture for minor transgressions is introduced."
Read quote
3 likes
"The politicized sponsors of this pseudoscientific nonsense should be ashamed to live, let alone die. If you want to take part in the “war” against cancer, and other terrible maladies, too, then join the battle against their lethal stupidity."
Read quote
3 likes
"I can't find the compulsory mutilation of the genitals of children a subject for humor... It's designed to repress sexual pleasure... The full excision, not just the snip but the full mandatory covenant is fantastically painful, leads to trauma, leads to the dulling of the sexual relationship. And can be, in itself life-threatening at that moment. We have records, I can show them to you, of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in the United States of boy babies who died or had life-threatening infections as a result of this disgusting practice."
Read quote
3 likes
"It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse."
Read quote
3 likes
"To what faults do you feel most indulgent? To the ones that arise from urgent material needs."
Read quote
3 likes
"If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does."
Read quote
3 likes
"If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings I'm still waiting to hear what your point is."
Read quote
3 likes
"So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion."
Read quote
3 likes
"Benito Mussolini had barely seized power in Italy before the Vatican made an official treaty with him, known as the Lateran Pact of 1929. Under the terms of this deal, Catholicism became the only recognized religion in Italy, with monopoly powers over matters such as birth, marriage, death, and education, and in return urged its followers to vote for Mussolini's party. Pope Pius XI described II Duce (“the leader”) as “a man sent by providence.”"
Read quote
3 likes
"To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do."
Read quote
3 likes
"It would have been very alarming - morally, and in other ways too - if an attack of that nature, the 11 September attacks, had not aroused in us and in our governments and societies the spirit of self-defence. If that had not been one of the responses it seems to me there would have been very grave cause for concern."
Read quote
3 likes
"In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Williamson is of course a notorious fool, who does an almost perfect imitation of a bleating and frightened sheep, but even so, one is forced to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Is it possible that a grown man could live so long and still have his personal composure, not to mention his lifetime job description, upset by a large ripple of seawater?"
Read quote
3 likes
"I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it."
Read quote
3 likes
"I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I'm still quite robust."
Read quote
3 likes
"Nothing optional -- from homosexuality to adultery -- is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishment) have a repressed desire to participate."
Read quote
3 likes
"I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny."
Read quote
3 likes