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Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Quotes

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Famous Christopher Hitchens Quotes

“Playing pool with Korean officials one evening in the Koryo Hotel, which has become the nightspot for foreign businessmen and an increasing number of diplomats (to say nothing of the burgeoning number of spies and journalists traveling under second identities), I was handed that day's edition of the Pyongyang Times. At first glance it seemed too laughable for words: endless pictures of the 'Dear Leader'—Little Boy's exalted title—as he was garlanded by adoring schoolchildren and heroic tractor drivers. Yet even in these turgid pages there were nuggets: a telegram congratulating the winner of the Serbian elections; a candid reference to the 'hardship period' through which the country had been passing; an assurance that a certain nuclear power plant would be closed as part of a deal with Washington. Tiny cracks, to be sure. But a complete and rigid edifice cannot afford fissures, however small. There appear to be no hookers, as yet, in Pyongyang. Yet if casinos come, can working girls be far behind? One perhaps ought not to wish for hookers, but there are circumstances when corruption is the only hope.”

United StatesJournalismPropagandaPoolDiplomacyProstitutionNorth KoreaEspionageCasinosSerbia2000Kim Jong IlPyongyangNorth Korea And WmdNorth Korean FamineKoryo HotelProstitution In North KoreaSerbian Election 2000The Pyongyang Times
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“Then all at once our personal and political quarrels were made very abruptly to converge. In the special edition of the London Review of Books published to mark the events of September 11, 2001, Edward painted a picture of an almost fascist America where Arab and Muslim citizens were being daily terrorized by pogroms, these being instigated by men like Paul Wolfowitz who had talked of 'ending' the regimes that sheltered Al Quaeda. Again, I could hardly credit that these sentences were being produced by a cultured person, let alone printed by a civilized publication.”

PoliticsFriendshipUnited StatesFascismMuslimsArabsQuarrelSeptember 11 AttacksEdward Said2001PogromsLrbAl QuaedaPaul Wolfowitz
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn’t quite recognize”, Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the Guardian, and then didn't attend it because I wanted to be on television instead. This is easy: Martin had asked to use the fine lobby of my building for a farewell bash, and I'd set it up. People have quite often asked me to do that. My wife did the honors after Nightline told me that I’d have to come to New York if I wanted to abuse Mother Teresa and Princess Diana on the same show. Of all the people I know, Martin Walker and Sidney Blumenthal would have been the top two in recognizing that journalism and argument come first, and that there can be no hard feelings about it. How do I know this? Well, I have known Martin since Oxford. (He produced a book on Clinton, published in America as 'The President We Deserve'. He reprinted it in London, under the title, 'The President They Deserve'. I doffed my hat to that.) While Sidney—I can barely believe I am telling you this—once also solicited an invitation to hold his book party at my home. A few days later he called me back, to tell me that Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic, had insisted on giving the party instead. I said, fine, no bones broken; no caterers ordered as yet. 'I don't think you quite get it,' he went on, after an honorable pause. 'That means you can't come to the party at all.' I knew that about my old foe Peretz: I didn't then know I knew it about Blumenthal. I also thought that it was just within the limit of the rules. I ask you to believe that I had buried this memory until this book came out, but also to believe that I won't be slandered and won't refrain—if motives or conduct are in question—from speculating about them in my turn.”

PoliticsFriendshipUnited StatesNew YorkTelevisionEnglandBetrayalLondonJournalismOxfordPettinessArgumentationBill ClintonMother TeresaThe Guardian1990sSidney BlumenthalPresidency Of Bill ClintonDiana Princess Of WalesThe New RepublicMartin Walker ReporterMarty PeretzNightlineUniversity Of Oxford
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically instinctual conviction.”

ShouldWritingPersonsMatterStatesNationsUnitedUnited StatesEffectsMoralityStandardsAssumingInternationalConvictionAssumptionJudgedHabitualSubversiveRhetorical
Book:For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
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“The United States has an isolationist and insular culture, combined with a global and interventionist posture. This highly dangerous and febrile mixture, which greatly facilitates the task of the fear-mongers and chauvinists, needs a very exact and nuanced diagnosis. I don't think that analogies from the totalitarian model, however suggestive, are sufficient.”

ThinkingNeedsStatesCultureUnitedUnited StatesDangerousModelsTasksSufficientMixturesDiagnosisPostureAnalogiesFacilitate
Book:For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
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“The first thing I can remember I ever wanted was to go to the United States. And for reasons that are as conventional as you can imagine: I wanted to know if it was really true that it was the land of opportunity, of democracy, and individual liberty.”

IfsKnowsFirstsI CanStatesReasonWantedRememberOpportunityIndividualUnitedLibertyUnited StatesDemocracyImagineLandConventionalIndividual LibertyReally TrueLand Of Opportunity
Book:Christopher Hitchens: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations
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“One of the reasons I decided to apply for American citizenship after something like a quarter of century of living here on a British, European Union passport and a green card, was my identification with the United States in the post-September 11th period.”

StatesReasonUnitedUnited StatesCenturyPeriodsDecidedGreenUnionsBritishCardsPostsQuartersSeptemberCitizenshipEuropean UnionIdentificationPassportsSeptember 11thGreen CardAmerican Citizenship
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“If anything qualifies as an irony of history it would be this: that Marx and Engels throughout the nineteenth century wrote about America the United States as the great country of the future, of freedom and equality and a good life for the working man, and a country of revolution and emancipation, and of Russia as the great country of despotism, backwardness, savagery and superstition.”

IfsMenCountryStatesWould BeAmericaUnitedUnited StatesCenturyRevolutionRussiaIronyGood LifeSuperstitionsNineteenth CenturyDespotismEmancipationGreat CountrySavageryWorking ManEngelsFreedom And Equality
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.”

ThinkingDoeStatesInterestingUnitedClassUnited StatesStudentsSurvivalJokesAskingMeetingsFormerThese DaysProfessorsGraduatesOxfordThesisGraduate StudentsClass SystemOld Jokes
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“I can't find the compulsory mutilation of the genitals of children a subject for humor... It's designed to repress sexual pleasure... The full excision, not just the snip but the full mandatory covenant is fantastically painful, leads to trauma, leads to the dulling of the sexual relationship. And can be, in itself life-threatening at that moment. We have records, I can show them to you, of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in the United States of boy babies who died or had life-threatening infections as a result of this disgusting practice.”

ChildrenI CanStatesMomentsShowsPleasureUnitedResultsBoysPracticeUnited StatesRecordsSubjectsBabyDiedAtheistPainfulTraumaThat MomentDisgustingThreateningCovenantInfectionCompulsoryMutilation
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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