Well, I'll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt. Christopher Hitchens on god
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. Christopher Hitchens on good
High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments. Christopher Hitchens on great
When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,' and so forth, I switch off quite early. Christopher Hitchens on great
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. Christopher Hitchens on great
The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply. Christopher Hitchens on great
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. Christopher Hitchens on health
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. Christopher Hitchens on history
'WASP' is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it's inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not. Christopher Hitchens on history
I think the materialist conception of history is valid. Christopher Hitchens on history
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. Christopher Hitchens on home
The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home. Christopher Hitchens on home
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. Christopher Hitchens on hope
A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope. Christopher Hitchens on hope
I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor. Christopher Hitchens on humor
I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing. Christopher Hitchens on politics
The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself. Christopher Hitchens on politics
The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is. Christopher Hitchens on politics
I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators. Christopher Hitchens on power