Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir Quotes

The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.

Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.

[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.

What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.

How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.

Cheap booze is a false economy.

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.

th. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience.

Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but...Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." (p. 129)

It's like a memorial to Atlantis or Lyonesse: these are the stone buoys that mark a drowned world.

I am sorry for those who have never had the experience of seeing the victory of a national liberation movement, and I feel cold contempt for those who jeer at it.