Quotes from Christopher Hitchens

If you don't state a clear preference, then your drink is like a bad game of poker or a hasty drug transaction: It is whatever the dealer says it is. Please do try to bear this in mind.

From a plurality of prime movers, the monotheists have bargained it down to a single one. They are getting ever nearer to the true, round figure.

But here are wine and beautiful young girls, Be wise and hide your sorrows in their curls, Dive as you will in life's mysterious sea, You shall not bring us any better pearls.

The argument about ethics and morality will have to go on in a post-religious society, just as it had to go on when religion was regnant and was often ordering good people to agree to evil things such as torture, slavery, or cruelty to children.

If only you were half so good as he! He sins no sins but gentle drunkenness, Great-hearted mirth, and kind adultery.

Imponderable Sir, I presume from some if not all of your many reputations that you might prefer honest and convinced unbelief to the hypocritical and self-interested affectation of faith or the smoking tributes of bloody altars.

Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic.

In our world, surely the worst thing anyone can say is; 'No further inquiry is needed. You've already got all you need to know.' It is the most sinister and dangerous thing.

To the dumb question Why me? the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?

The pluralism of religion is attributable to the fact that man created God and not the other way around. If you accept the posture that man makes gods, there is no mystery in the proliferation of gods and religions that has always existed in human society. If

Thomas Jefferson said, "I tremble for my country when I remember that god is just.

The voice of reason is small, but very persistent.

I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been, as Lucretius observes.

The road to Damascus was not and is not a one-way street.

Except that cancer isn't so … considerate.

The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain.

And in these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of religion; which by reason of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.

One of the most celebrated victims of this theocratic policy was Shelley (1792-1811) who was expelled from University College, Oxford, for writing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.

Religion poisons everything

the few heroic sluts on this great working-girl turf

I'm reminded of the lady governor of Texas who, during a controversy about bilingualism in the State House in Austin, said if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it was plenty good enough for her.

that an article of mine was well argued but dull, and advised me briskly to write "more like the way you talk.

The belief of an infinity of creative and created Gods, each more eminently requiring an intelligent author of his being than the foregoing, is a direct consequence of the premises, which you have stated.

The belief of an infinity of creative and created Gods, each more eminently requiring an intelligent author of his being than the foregoing, is a direct consequence of the premises, which you have stated. The assumption that the Universe is a design, leads to a conclusion that there are infinity of creative and created Gods, which is absurd. It is impossible indeed to prescribe limits to learned error, when Philosophy relinquishes experience and feeling for speculation.