Christopher Hitchens Quotes

I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.

I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyone who falls for Camelot.

What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'?

Thus in order to be a "radical" one must be open to the possibility that one's own core assumptions are misconceived.

The barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open to them. And it's your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you

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.

The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.

Bloomberg does not support the measure to silence the useless and maddening car alarm: he would rather impose himself on people than on mechanical devices.

Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries.

It is indeed strange, given the heavy emphasis placed by chroniclers on Churchill's sheer magnitude of personality, that the ingredient of pure ambition should be so much ignored or even disallowed.

When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry, ' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.

Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question The Obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' [All is to be doubted].

mass indoctrination of uneducated young men with such ideas is in itself a lethal danger to society and to international order.

[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair.

When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.

At a certain point talk about 'essence' and 'oneness' and the universal becomes more tautological than inquisitive.

[T]his is an enemy for life, as well as an enemy of life.

Religion poisons everything

Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence.

I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.

Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).

Those who say that I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.

There is no such thing as notoriety in the United States these days, let alone infamy. Celebrity is all.

In effect, nobody who is not from the losing classes has ever been thrust into a death cell in these United States.

Among the privileges of being a superpower, the right and the ability to make a local quarrel into a global one ranks very high.

How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?

Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments.

Ronald Reagan said that he sought a Star Wars defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.