Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Christopher Hitchens

Quote by Christopher Hitchens

“George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.”

Quote by Christopher Hitchens

Book:Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
Create image

Work

Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

This book delves into the intellectual debate surrounding Christopher Hitchens' perspectives on key contemporary issues, analyzing the responses and counterarguments from various critics. more

Author

Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was an English-American author, journalist, and social critic. He was known for his sharp wit and controversial views, particularly on religion and politics. Hitchens was a prominent figure in the public discourse of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. more

You May Also Like

“Very well. He'd lighten up. As a matter of fact, he felt as light as the bubbly froth that flew from the lips of the waves. Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil.”

LifePlayEvilFunCharityTranscendencePietyVigilance
Book:Jitterbug Perfume
Create image

“Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.”

WarEvilCivilizationGoodResentmentWwiiBarbarismJewsNazisPettinessOrdinarinessDenunciation
Book:The Dream of Scipio
Create image

“In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21”

EvilNon Violence
Book:Gandhi on Non-violence
Create image

“[Gli uomini] sono gli unici, fra tutti gli esseri creati, che hanno la possibilità d'andare contro l'ordine posto da Dio nel creato: gli uomini sono cioè gli unici esseri veramente liberi, appunto perché sono liberi nei confronti di Dio... Dio aveva dovuto tollerare, ecco, aveva dovuto permettere questo male, e tutte le altre cattiverie e carognate che gli uomini fanno: e ciò per non andare contro la loro libertà. Il gran problema del male nel mondo... Appunto per non impedire la libertà dell'uomo.”

EvilChristianity
Book:The Red Horse
Create image