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Christopher Hitchens
263 quotes
“No possible future government in Kabul can be worse than the Taliban, and no thinkable future government would allow the level of Al Qaeda gangsterism to recur. So the outcome is proportionate and congruent with international principles of self-defense.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An old definition of a gentleman: someone who is never rude except on purpose.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Joseph Heller knew how the need to belong, and the need for security, can make people accept lethal and stupid conditions, and then act as if they had imposed them on themselves.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. It especially annoys me when racists are accused of "discrimination". The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members of one "race" to be the same, the racists precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An official of the Teamsters' Union, asked by a Senate hearing if his union was really powerful, responded guardedly but elegantly by saying that being powerful was a little like being ladylike: "If you have to say you are, you prob'ly ain't.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Have a lived life instead of a career. Put yourself in the safekeeping of good taste. Lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses... If you don't like the style of others, cultivate your own. Get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self-publisher even in conversation, and then the joy of working can fill your days. - George Konrad”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then the big white whale, Clinton. What about someone who is a war criminal, a taker of bribes from foreign dictatorships, almost certainly a rapist (plausibly accused, anyway, by three believable women, of rape), executed a black man (Ricky Ray Rector) who was so mentally retarded that he was unable to plead or to understand the charges — You're against all that, right? But you're for it when it's someone who you think is a "New Democrat".”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversations with History: A Dissenting Voice", interview by Harry Kreisler (2002-04-25).
“It’s a very vulgar, arithmetical, pragmatic way of arguing anyway. If you do that, then get the facts and figures wrong, well then you’re really fucked. You’re fucked twice.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Christopher Hitchens, May 2002 : On Noam Chomsky
“Many of the points made by the antiwar movement have been consciously assimilated by the Pentagon and its lawyers and advisers. Precision weaponry is good in itself, but its ability to discriminate is improving and will continue to improve. Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A View from the Patriotic Left", Boston Globe (2002-09-09)]: On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
“I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you're actually certain that you're hitting only a concentration of enemy troops... then it's pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they're bearing a Koran over their heart, it'll go straight through that, too. So they won't be able to say, 'Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.' No way, 'cause it'll go straight through that as well. They'll be dead, in other words.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Even if the U.S. doesn't attack] Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nov. 7, 2002: On Iraq
“Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many if not most of Kissinger's partners in crime are now in jail, or are awaiting trial, or have been otherwise punished or discredited. His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the philosopher Anacharsis, who mantained that laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to detain only the weak, and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims known and unknown, it is time for justice to take a hand.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It must be obvious to anyone who can think at all that the charges against the Hussein regime are, as concerns arsenals of genocidal weaponry, true.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I doubt that even if this evidence could be upgraded to 100 per cent it would persuade the sort of people who go on self-appointed missions of mediation to Baghdad. These people further fail to see that governments now have a further responsibility to their citizens — namely to see that something is done to prevent future assaults on civilisation.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only the force of American arms, or the extremely credible threat of that force, can bring a fresh face to power.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jan. 14, 2003: On Iraq
“The best case scenario is a rapid attack by precision-guided weapons, striking Saddam's communications in the first hours and preventing his deranged orders from being obeyed. Then a massive landing will bring food, medicine and laptop computers to a surging crowd of thankful and relieved Iraqis and Kurds. This could, in theory, all happen.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Happens Next to Iraq", Daily Mirror (2003-02-26): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
“It was not for the sake of oil that the risky decision to cease this corrupt coexistence was made. But at least now the Iraqi people have a chance of controlling their own main resource, and it will be our task to ensure that the funding and revenue are transparent instead of opaque.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: April 18, 2003: On Iraq
“Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam!”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Unmitigated Galloway", The Weekly Standard] (2005-05-30): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
“Mosul is the site of a very famous old Iraqi university. The American forces were refurbishing the place. They were going to tear down some of the outer walls, give this palace to the university. They'd also connected the university to the Internet and to the Web. Helped people contact scholars on the outside world. That was all the job of these very good- humored, very thoughtful officers who were really helping to rebuild the place... I felt a sense of annoyance that I had to go there myself to find any of that out.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Gibson (July 2003), Vanity Fair.
“Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." appears by itself in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007).
“MT [ Mother Teresa ] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The realization that American power could and should be used for the defense of pluralism and as a punishment for fascism came to me in Sarajevo a year or two later... That was an early quarrel between me and many of my Nation colleagues, and it was also the first time I found myself in the same trench as people like Paul Wolfowitz and Jeane Kirkpatrick: a shock I had to learn to get over.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has — from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Chomsky] has now been impeached by his own standards, since scrutiny of the evidence does not bear him out on Serbia or Afghanistan or Iraq. It didn't bear him out on Cambodia either, though he was never a "Holocaust denier" or anything like it. And he has, I think, ceased to be of any use to young people who might pardonably doubt the official story.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2004: On Noam Chomsky/Cambodia.
“It is a frequent vice of radical polemic to assert, and even to believe, that once you have found the lowest motive for an antagonist, you have identified the correct one.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reactionary Prophet", The Atlantic, April 2004
“Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American, someone (Michael Moore) who actually embodies all of those qualities.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Scarborough Country on MSNBC, (2004-05-18: On Michael Moore
“To describe this film [Fahrenheit 9/11] as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The (Catholic) church, as far as I know, has not endorsed any war as just since it supported General Franco's invasion of Spain to destroy the Spanish republic with a Muslim mercenary army in the thirties, on the side of Hitler.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: With Andrew Sullivan on Tim Russert, CNBC (2004-09-25).
“There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tariq Ali v. Christopher Hitchens: A Debate on the U.S. War on Iraq, the Bush-Kerry Race and the Neo-Conservative Movement", Democracy Now (2004-10-12).
“The death toll is not nearly high enough... too many [jihadists] have escaped.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Referring to the Fallujah offensive on November 2004
“Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays (Nation Books, 2004): On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
“I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And yet, I wake up every day to a sensation of pervading disgust and annoyance. I probably ought to carry around some kind of thermometer or other instrument, to keep checking that I am not falling prey to premature curmudgeonhood.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They ("Islamo-fascists") gave us no peace and we shouldn’t give them any. We can't live on the same planet as them and I'm glad because I don’t want to. I don’t want to breathe the same air as these psychopaths and murderers and rapists and torturers and child abusers. It's them or me. I'm very happy about this because I know it will be them. It’s a duty and a responsibility to defeat them. But it's also a pleasure. I don’t regard it as a grim task at all.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Christopher Hitchens" WashingtonPrism.org (2005-06-16).
“The enormous dynamic and creative, as well as destructive energy of capitalism... is written up with more praise and more respect by Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto than probably by anyone since. I don't think anyone has ever said so precisely and with such awed admiration how great capitalism is, how inventive, how innovative, how dynamic, how much force of creativity it unleashes.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, PBS (June 2005).
“As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no reason at all why there aren't enough people to guard New Orleans and to help stabilise Baghdad.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Voters will remember disaster response, Hitchens says", Lateline interview with Tony Jones, Australian Broadcasting Corporation {2005-09-05): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
“One could happily make a case that more random civilians, and fewer fucking lawyers, should be on the court. But the only other thing to say about Miers is that she is a fucking lawyer.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...the same mistake that disfigured the coverage of the Bosnian war, where every consumer of news was made to understand that there was fighting between Serbs, Croats, and "Muslims." There are two apples and one orange in that basket, as any fool should be able to see. Serbian and Croatian are national differences, which track very closely with the distinction between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic beliefs. Many Muslims are Bosnian, but not all Bosnians are Muslim. And in fact, the Bosnian forces in the late war were those which most repudiated any confessional definition.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source