Christopher Hitchens Quotes And Sayings

Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British-American author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books. In 2007, Hitchens published his most popular book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which was a New York Times bestseller.

I Don't Think It's Possible To Have A Sense Of Tragedy Without Having A Sense Of Humor.

I'm Here As A Product Of Process Of Evolution, Which Doesn't Make Very Many Exceptions. And Which Rates Life Relatively Cheaply.

Religion Is Part Of The Human Make-up. It's Also Part Of Our Cultural And Intellectual History. Religion Was Our First Attempt At Literature, The Texts, Our First Attempt At Cosmology, Making Sense Of Where We Are In The Universe, Our First Attempt At Health Care, Believing In Faith Healing, Our First Attempt At Philosophy.

Religion Is Not Going To Come Up With Any New Arguments.

Literature, Not Scripture, Sustains The Mind And - Since There Is No Other Metaphor - Also The Soul.

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.

Terrorism Is The Tactic Of Demanding The Impossible, And Demanding It At Gunpoint.

Nothing Could Make Me Forget What The Reagan Years Had Actually Been Like.

Read With Care, George Orwell's Diaries, From The Years 1931 To 1949, Can Greatly Enrich Our Understanding Of How Orwell Transmuted The Raw Material Of Everyday Experience Into Some Of His Best-known Novels And Polemics.

I Mean, What Would I Be Doing If I Couldn't Write? But That Fortunately Hasn't Proved To Be The Case And I Can Read Any Day. I Still Read A Lot, And I Can Write Any Day, But Much More Slowly And Fewer Words.

I Had Real Plans For My Next Decade And Felt I'd Worked Hard Enough To Earn It. Will I Really Not Live To See My Children Married? To Watch The World Trade Center Rise Again? To Read - If Not Indeed Write - The Obituaries Of Elderly Villains Like Henry Kissinger And Joseph Ratzinger?

It's True That Obscenity Is A Matter Of Taste And In The Eye Of The Beholder.

I Sometimes Wish I Were Suffering In A Good Cause, Or Risking My Life For The Good Of Others, Instead Of Just Being A Gravely Endangered Patient.

High Moral Character Is Not A Precondition For Great Moral Accomplishments.

And When I Was Young, My Family Was Perfectly Nice. I Write A Lot About It, As You Noticed. But It Was Rather Limited. I Think, I Don't Think Anyone In My Family Would Really Feel I'd Done Them An Injustice By Saying That. We Didn't See Many People. There Were Many Books. It Was As If I Wanted To Get Away From Home.

I Have Tried For Much Of My Life To Write As If I Was Composing My Sentences To Be Read Posthumously.

I'm Not That Keen On The Idea Of Being Unconscious.

I Think The Materialist Conception Of History Is Valid.

If You Can Talk, You Can Write.

I Have Nowhere Claimed Nor Even Implied That Unbelief Is A Guarantee Of Good Conduct Or Even An Indicator Of It.

I'd Always Somehow Felt Slightly As If I'd Been Born In The Wrong Country.

The Worst Days Are When You Feel Foggy In The Head - Chemo-brain They Call It. It's Awful Because You Feel Boring. As Well As Bored. And Stupid. And Resigned.

Not Many People Come Through Esophageal Cancer And Live To Talk About It, Or Not For Long.

I Don't Think Souls Or Bodies Can Be Changed By Incantation. Or Anything Else By The Way.

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.

If I'm In A Political Argument, I Think I Can, With Reasonable Accuracy And Without Boasting, Put The Other Person's Side Of The Case At Least As Well As They Could. One Has To Be Able To Say That In Any Well-conducted Argument.

My Children, To The Extent That They Have Found Religion, Have Found It From Me, In That I Insist On At Least A Modicum Of Religious Education For Them.

There's Been Some Research In Cognitive Science, I'm Told, That Discloses That There Have Always Been Perhaps 10 To 15 Percent Of People Who Are, As Pascal Puts It, So Made That They Cannot Believe. To Us, When People Talk About Faith, It's White Noise.

I Used To Wish There Was A Useful Term For Those Of Us Who Thought American Power Should Be Used To Remove Psychopathic Dictators.

I Like Surprises.

I'm Not A Sheep.

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.

The People Who Tend To Raise Antiwar Slogans Will Do So Generally When It's American Or British Interests Involved.

The Cause Of My Life Has Been To Oppose Superstition. It's A Battle You Can't Hope To Win - It's A Battle That's Going To Go On Forever. It's Part Of The Human Condition.

One Of The Great Questions Of Philosophy Is, Do We Innately Have Morality, Or Do We Get It From Celestial Dictation? A Study Of The Ten Commandments Is A Very Good Way Of Getting Into And Resolving That Issue.

I Think I Write In A Fairly Self-confident Manner.

In The Grip Of A Neurological Disorder, I Am Fast Losing Control Of Words Even As My Relationship With The World Has Been Reduced To Them.

I Don't Have Any Terrific Self-esteem Issues But I Do Sometimes Realise I've Been Too Lucky And That I'm Over-praised. It Makes Me Nervous. I Have This Sense Of Being Overrated.

Talking, It Seemed To Me, Was The Point Of Adult Existence.

The Islamists Will Try To Spoil Everything For Everyone.

You Can Be A Polish American, Or An Arab American, Or A Greek American But You Can't Be English American. Why Not?

I Have More Than Once In My Time Woken Up Feeling Like Death.

I Don't Envy Or Much Respect People Who Are Completely Politicised.

All The Time, I've Felt That Life Is A Wager And That I Probably Was Getting More Out Of Leading A Bohemian Existence As A Writer Than I Would Have If I Didn't.

When We Talk About Mortality, We Are Talking About Our Children.

The Citizens Of Tumortown Are Forever Assailed With Cures And Rumors Of Cures.

A Faction Willing To Take The Risks Of Making War On The Ossified Status Quo In The Middle East Can Be Described As Many Things, But Not As Conservative.

I Joined A Small But Growing Post-trotskyite Luxembourgist Sect.

Littera Scripta Manet - 'The Written Word Will Remain'. That's True, But It Won't Be That Much Comfort To Me.

A Speech Idiosyncrasy, In The Same Way As An Air Quote, Is Really Justifiable Only If It's Employed Very Sparingly And If The User Consciously Intends To Be Using It.