"The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God's representative on earth."
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Quote collection
Christopher Hitchens quotes (page 8 of 32)
626 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We know that our life is essentially tragic. I'm absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, "Why didn't you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind.""
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"The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement."
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"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."
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"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."
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"Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes."
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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."
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"The crucial distinction between systems...was no longer ideological. The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could -- or should -- be the property of the state."
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"The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made."
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"The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books."
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"The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way."
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"I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world."
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"No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine"
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"There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument."
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"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."
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"Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint."
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"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."
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"A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'."
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"Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake."
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"Redemption is promised at the low price of surrender of your critical faculties."
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