Quotessence
Home / Authors / Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllReligionIfsPeopleAtheismThinkingUnited StatesAtheistPoliticsKnowsHumansWarWayWellsWritingReasonBelieveGod Is Not GreatStatesWorldHas Beens

Famous Christopher Hitchens Quotes

“I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long. If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who did have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be forgiven? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.”

HumansReligionJesusChristianityAtheismIslamMythMosesMuhammadAbrahamMessiahChristiansTheismJewsEinsteinFreudMuslimsAntisemitismMarxProphets
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
Create image

“Along with Islam and Christianity, Judaism does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.”

ThinkingHumansDoeSometimesFactsEvilLibertyChristianityWrittenAtheismConditionsIntellectualMadIslamWord Of GodIndispensableJudaismContradictoryRealisation
Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
Create image

“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.”

PeopleWayMindHumansHelpingShowsHomeCoursesStupidArmsMembersDegreesFindingsNewsMassOrdinaryProgramSpeciesOne WayDepressingQuarrelsAnother WayVariationBack HomeYou AgainSeething
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“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.”

FirstsBelieveHumansPhilosophyCareUniverseLiteratureHealingIntellectualHealth CareMake SenseCosmologyFaith Healing
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.”

WorldMindHumansRealReligionRecordsAtheismMaterialsMetsUnderstoodClaimsIntelligentAtheistBelieverFantasticGodlyQualificationsExertionMaterial WorldPower Over OthersHighly Intelligent
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.”

HumansMayDoeMotivationalTogetherReligionAtheismSlaveryBoundsAtheistBridesCrudeCleansingWarrantsMassacresEthnic CleansingMammalsTraffickingGod Is Not GreatSubtle Atheist
Book:God is Not Great
Create image

“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.”

WritingHumansHandsBeliefStudyAtheismMiracleClaimsMereAtheistCertaintyProphetEncountersRevelationsReportsFrightenedDisplaySubmitAccustomedAmbiguityPeasantsMessiahIlliterateRedeemerApproximationDictation
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.”

NeedsMindHumansLawBeliefForceSacrificeAtheismOffersLimitsWeaponsClaimsAtheistPursuitInevitableHuman LifeCourageousIronicFearfulInvestigationCultLaws Of NaturePatheticOpen MindLiteralMindlessWailingAdulationInevitable Death
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea of what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge. Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion.”

KnowsHumansChildrenMadeIdeasMatterTodayReligionOrderNaturalPeriodsDemandSpeciesEducatedMy ChildrenAtomsFearfulSmallestFoundersInfancyNatural OrderGod Is Not GreatPrehistorySubtle AtheistInfancy Is
Book:Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume
Create image

“The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation, but the wrong culprit. Human sacrifices were made preeminently in times of epidemics, useless prayers were uttered, bogus miracles attested to, and scapegoats - such as Jews or heretics or witches - hunted down and burned.”

HumansMadeUsedReligionPrayerSacrificeIgnoranceMiracleDown AndSpeciesJewUselessExplanationWitchEpisodesBurnedCalamityEpidemicsHereticHuntedScapegoatCulprit
Book:The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Create image

“Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly 'holy text dictated by god' and show that they are man made and what you have to show [is] there internal inconsistencies and absurdities. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority... it is an indispensable thing people can call it blasphemy if they like, but if they call it that they have to assume there is something to be blasphemed - some divine work, well I don't accept the premise.”

PeopleIfsMenHumansWellsMadeShowsAbilityAcceptingLaughingDivineHolyEssentialsAuthorityAssumingAtheistInternalsAbsurdityIndispensablePremisesMockeryEmancipationBlasphemyInconsistency
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“[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.”

KnowsHumansSelfActionReligionEvilAtheismDivineIntegrityAuthorityDeterminationRewardsCorePunishmentDecentWickedSelf RespectPermissionHuman Actions
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think-though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one-that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.”

ThinkingKnowsHumansChildrenSeemsTodayReligionOrderNaturalHellConnectionsFellowsEducatedMy ChildrenFoundersNatural OrderGod Is Not GreatUninterestedSubtle Atheist
Book:Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume
Create image

“Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet - who was only another male mammal - is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent.”

IfsHumansWellsArtFormOffersClaimsPrejudiceAbsolutesDancingIslamMalesAlcoholProofProphetWarningAggressiveRepresentingProhibitionPorkMammalsHuman Form
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“In some ways I feel sorry for racists and for religious fanatics, because they so much miss the point of being human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so.”

WayFeelsHumansHeartHateReligiousMissingMy HeartDeserveMiserySorryExcusePityRacistBeing HumanFanaticsReligious Fanatics
Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
Create image

“In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust.”

NeedsShouldHumansOrderChallengesAtheistExplanationAssumptionHolocaustPrimitiveFloodUnnecessaryPatheticFallacyOntology
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image

“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.”

PeopleIfsWritingHumansMadeHelpingHomeInspirationTodayReadingRevolutionCitizensAlcoholGreekIranDelightedVisitingBansIngenuityTediousVisitorsBuzzBoozeBlandDefyingBootleggingReading Or Writing
Author:Christopher Hitchens
Create image