Quotes from Christopher Hitchens

In my life, the only certainty is to be uncertain. I'm an unbeliever who believes in skepticism. I'm only sure about being unsure.

Anyone who can look me in the eye and say they prefer the story of Moses or Jesus or Mohammed to the life of Socrates is intellectually defective.

Happiness is fleeting and life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us.

I've proved to be as difficult to convert as I am to hypnotize.

Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'

You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?

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

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British interests involved.

The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.

I don't have any terrific self-esteem issues but I do sometimes realise I've been too lucky and that I'm over-praised. It makes me nervous. I have this sense of being overrated.

I'm terrified of losing my voice.

Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.

I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

The citizens of Tumortown are forever assailed with cures and rumors of cures.

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

For me, the life of the angler is an almost flawless example of how not to have a good time.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.

Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, 'Well, good on you. See you there.'