What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence. Christopher Hitchens More Quotes by Christopher Hitchens More Quotes From Christopher Hitchens Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. Christopher Hitchens doe writing book Here is my challenge. Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first - I have been asking it for some time - awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain. Christopher Hitchens religious faith thinking What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition. Christopher Hitchens atheist racism stupid Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation. Christopher Hitchens atheist writing hands The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. Christopher Hitchens relax able essence In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion. Christopher Hitchens wicked people religion How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape. Christopher Hitchens atheism atheist country Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea. Christopher Hitchens abjection korea self To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid. Christopher Hitchens vintage atheist doubt Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens eyebrows awards believe The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness. Christopher Hitchens party real thinking It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us - waking and sleeping - who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime, thought crime, just for what we think, who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick, as apparently we are - and then order us, on pain of eternal torture to be well again. Christopher Hitchens pain dream sleep Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence. Christopher Hitchens principles use religion The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition. Christopher Hitchens discrimination racist definitions [Concerning monotheistic religions] The only thing these hysterical cults have in common is the belief that this world will be consumed, and deservedly so, when the moment is ripe. They also, all of them, profess a great disdain for earthly possessions. Yet they pass the intervening time in haggling over the most trivial and paltry property rights, over caves and rocks and disputable pieces of archeological rubbish. Christopher Hitchens rocks caves rights MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. Christopher Hitchens empowerment suffering mother In one way, traveling has narrowed my mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting, which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight. This is of course an encouraging finding; it helps arm you against news programs back home that show seething or abject masses of either fanatical or torpid people. In another way it is a depressing finding; the sorts of things that make people quarrel and make them stupid are the same everywhere. Christopher Hitchens depressing stupid home Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it. Christopher Hitchens atheism atheist religion When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen. Christopher Hitchens spinoza woody may I'm a member of no party. I have no ideology. I'm a rationalist. I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that's all around us. Christopher Hitchens stupidity party struggle
