Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity. Christopher Hitchens More Quotes by Christopher Hitchens More Quotes From Christopher Hitchens I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book. Christopher Hitchens reading book travel 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. Christopher Hitchens white believe people What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Christopher Hitchens inquiry phrases west How do I know that I know this, except that I've always been taught this and never heard anything else? [...] How sure am I of my own views? Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be okay, because you're in the safely moral majority. Christopher Hitchens views feelings thinking I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst. Christopher Hitchens opponents style real There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument. Christopher Hitchens lazy stupid people A gentleman is never rude except on purpose - I can honestly be nasty sober, believe you me. Christopher Hitchens rude gentleman believe Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. Christopher Hitchens tactics terrorism impossible Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption. Christopher Hitchens islam arrogance teaching If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox. Christopher Hitchens buried atheist religion No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn't be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well. Christopher Hitchens expression idols book Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. Christopher Hitchens inspiration reading home The (Catholic) church, as far as I know, has not endorsed any war as just since it supported General Franco's invasion of Spain to destroy the Spanish republic with a Muslim mercenary army in the thirties, on the side of Hitler. Christopher Hitchens catholic army war This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine. Christopher Hitchens religious blessed america What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation. Christopher Hitchens claims class way Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's. Christopher Hitchens yesterday memories book I'm dying, but so are you Christopher Hitchens dying inspirational I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. Christopher Hitchens composing sentences writing The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more. Christopher Hitchens educated persons world Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men for surrendering our 'godly gift' of reason when we cross their mental thresholds? Christopher Hitchens godly atheist men
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