Quotes from Christopher Hitchens

Hegel said that history was the story of freedom becoming conscious of itself.

Yet in our hands and within our view is a whole universe of discovery and clarification, which is a pleasure to study in itself, gives the average person access to insights that not even Darwin or Einstein possessed, and offers the promise of near-miraculous advances in healing, in energy, and in peaceful exchange between different cultures. Yet millions of people in all societies still prefer the myths of the cave and the tribe and the blood sacrifice.

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it.

Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.

Pero una vez más se demuestra que la religión monoteísta es un plagio de una habladuría sobre una habladuría de una ilusión sobre una ilusión que se remonta mucho tiempo atrás a la invención de unos cuantos fiascos.

Many people who belong to no church, and who are even hostile to organized faith, profess a belief in God because, in the usual phrase, it gives their life meaning. (This is of course subject to the same grand regress as the creationist argument: just as we have to ask who then created the Creator, so we're bound to ask if God's life has meaning and, if so, from what deity He or She derives it.)

The ignorant psychopath or brute who mistreats his children must be punished but can be understood. Those who claim a heavenly warrant for the cruelty have been tainted by evil, and also constitute far more of a danger.

And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.

El Estado norcoreano nació aproximadamente en la misma época en que se publicó 1984, y cualquiera podría casi creer que el santo padre del Estado, Kim Il-sung, recibió un ejemplar de la novela y le preguntaron si sería capaz de ponerla en práctica.

There are many ways of dating the moment when the Left lost or—I would prefer to say—discarded its moral advantage, but this was the first time that I was to see the sellout conducted so cheaply.

If someone publicly charges that 'Mormonism is a cult,' it is impossible to say that the claim by itself is mistaken or untrue. However, if the speaker says that heaven is a real place but that you will not get there if you are Jewish, or that Mormonism is a cult and a false religion but that other churches and faiths are the genuine article, then you know that the bigot has spoken.

Nonetheless, there are in all periods people who feel themselves in some fashion to be *apart*.

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

The succeeding stage, very plainly announced in hysterical sermons, was to be the moment when apocalyptic nihilists coincided with Armageddon weaponry.

He would appear never to have diluted his opinions in the hope of seeing his byline disseminated to the paying customers; this alone is a clue to why he still matters.

Girls—and boys—strike up conversations, only to reveal that they don't just like you for your mind or even—this is especially hurtful—for your body.

If you Iive long enough, if you don't fall in love too easily, and if you keep your hatred pure– wonderful things can happen.

Capitalism. Downfall.

The North Korean state was born at about the same time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published , and one could almost believe that the holy father of the state, Kim Il Sung, was given a copy of the novel and asked if he could make it work in practice.

it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity

these are the rewards of maturity, to be enjoyed only as we decline. We

the idea that two and two make five, for instance, was suggested by multiple sources. Stalin's propagandists were fond of saying that they completed the first Five Year Plan in four years; this was sometimes rendered for the simple-minded as 2+2=5.

Knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light

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