Everyone in Iran is perceived to be a child with a paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Sufi elders. They're supposed to be grateful. They can never for a moment not be afforded this wonderful protection. The father who will never go away. The father who will never quit caring for them.

Christopher Hitchens

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.

Christopher Hitchens

notebook christian names

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.

Christopher Hitchens

intelligent stupid thinking

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.

Christopher Hitchens

believe lying children

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.

Christopher Hitchens

giving-up believe religion

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Christopher Hitchens

atheist wisdom inspirational

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

Christopher Hitchens

stupidity silence atheist

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

Christopher Hitchens

religious children religion

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

Christopher Hitchens

patterns conspiracy animal

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

Christopher Hitchens

tolerance hypocrite people

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

Christopher Hitchens

renounce devil enemy

[Religion] attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action.

Christopher Hitchens

determination self integrity

We have no proof that Socrates ever existed. We only know from witnesses to his life that he did. Like Jesus, he never wrote anything down. It doesn't matter to me whether he did or not exist because we have his teachings, his method of thinking, and his extreme intellectual and moral courage.

Christopher Hitchens

teaching jesus thinking

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.

Christopher Hitchens

he-man guru men

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.

Christopher Hitchens

lunatic-asylums planets views

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

Christopher Hitchens

atheism important religion

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.

Christopher Hitchens

atheism atheist religious

Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.

Christopher Hitchens

fascists coward used

I became a journalist because I didn't want to have to rely on the press for information... I only read it to make sure of whatever everyone else thinks is going on, because it's useful to know what people think is the news.

Christopher Hitchens

news people thinking

I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.

Christopher Hitchens

atheist religious mean

We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.

Christopher Hitchens

physics discovery world