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Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Quotes

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Famous Christopher Hitchens Quotes

“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?”

IfsWorldWritingChildrenRealHardEnoughNextFeltWatchesPlansMarriedTradeDecadesMy ChildrenVillainElderlyWorld TradeWorld Trade CenterObituaryKissingerHenry Kissinger
Book:Mortality
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“Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in the air which made one think - made me think for many years - that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it.”

ThinkingKnowsYearsMadeSaidEnergyAirNew YorkErrorsExcitementWasting TimeNeurosisWasted TimeTime Spent
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don't so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it's time to be on my way. No, it's the snickering that gets me down.”

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Book:Mortality
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“By trying to adjust to the findings that it once tried so viciously to ban and repress, religion has only succeeded in restating the same questions that undermined it in earlier epochs. What kind of designer or creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of designer or creator is so cruel and indifferent? And - most of all - what kind of designer or creator only chooses to "reveal" himself to semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions?”

TryingKindFindingsCreatorDesertDesignerRegionsIndifferentPeasantsBansCapricious
Book:The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
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“I was precocious enough to watch the news and read the papers, and I can remember October 1956, the simultaneous crisis in Hungary and Suez, very well. And getting a sense that the world was dangerous, a sense that the game was up, that the Empire was over.”

WorldWellsI CanEnoughRememberGamesWatchesDangerousPaperNewsCrisisEmpiresPapersOctoberSimultaneousHungaryPrecocious
Book:Christopher Hitchens: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations
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“It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.”

IfsI CanMatterHateLiteratureIndividualExpressionI HateStupidityDefenseHatedIronyPhrasesBullyingCensorshipDictatorshipVersusColumnsIntimidationSalmonFree ExpressionRushdieDemagogy
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs or surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or to the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes.”

HappensTurnsHeavenPoorEffectsCitizensDrugSurgeryCeremonyHealerTelescopesGod Is Not Great
Book:God is Not Great
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“American author Mark Twain, while viewed as liberal and non-judgmental, did at times demonstrate both these characteristics. While his reasons for detesting the Christian faith are unclear, they seem to have been profound and deep-rooted. Having lambasted the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, in a later quote he referred to the Book of Mormon as "chloroform in print."”

Has BeensBookReasonSeemsChristianMarkProfoundCharacteristicsPrintRootedMaryFoundersChristian FaithJudgmentalBakersUnclearChristian ScienceNon JudgmentalChloroformAmerican Author
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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