"Hannah Arendt in her study of totalitarianism borrowed from Immanuel Kant the concept of radical evil, of evil that's so evil that in the end it destroys itself, it's so committed to evil and it's so committed to hatred and cruelty that it becomes suicidal. My definition of it is the surplus value that's generated by totalitarianism. It means you do more violence, more cruelty than you absolutely have to to stay in power."

3 likes

Source: Source: www.abc.net.au

About the author

Christopher Hitchens

Author, Critic, Journalist

Christopher Hitchens was a renowned author and critic known for his provocative views on religion, politics, and culture, particularly in his book 'God Is Not Great.'

All quotes by Christopher Hitchens →

Same author

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

See all →
Christopher Hitchens Author, Critic, Journalist

"Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite."

Read quote
Christopher Hitchens Author, Critic, Journalist

"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."

Read quote
Christopher Hitchens Author, Critic, Journalist

"Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith."

Read quote
Christopher Hitchens Author, Critic, Journalist

"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."

Read quote