Quotes About Controversy

If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do

Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.

Where would you like to live? In a state of conflict or a conflicted state.

In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or, as it might be phrased in Latin form, no child's behind left.

One of my first reservations about Zionism was and is that, semiconsciously at least, it grants the anti-Semite's first premise about the abnormality of the Jew.

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

In the controversy that followed the prince's remarks, his most staunch defender was professor John Taylor, a scholar whose work I had last noticed when he gave good reviews to the psychokinetic (or whatever) capacities of the Israeli conjuror and fraud Uri Geller. The heir to the throne seems to possess the ability to surround himself—perhaps by some mysterious ultramagnetic force?—with every moon-faced spoon-bender, shrub-flatterer, and water-diviner within range.

The holy book in the longest continuous use—the Talmud—commands the observant one to thank his maker every day that he was not born a woman.

We make no saint of Thomas Jefferson—we leave the mindless business of canonization and the worship of humans to the fanatics—but aware as we are of his many crimes and contradictions we say with confidence that his memory and example will endure long after the moral pygmies who try to blot out his name have been forgotten.

I think that all filth is local…and that a joke isn't a joke unless it's at somebody's expense

People say, What's it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the Internet? It washes off me like jizz off a porn star's face.

Christopher Hitchens

Some statements are too blunt for everyday, consensual discourse. In national "debate," it is the smoother pebbles that are customarily gathered from the stream, and used as projectiles. They leave less of a scar, even when they hit. Occasionally, however, a single hard-edged remark will inflict a deep and jagged wound, a gash so ugly that it must be cauterized at once. In

why has the blowjob had a dual existence for so long, sometimes subterranean and sometimes flaunted, before bursting into plain view as the specifically American sex act?

Religion poisons everything

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.

Reason is the Devil's harlot, who can do nought but slander and harm whatever God says and does. —MARTIN LUTHER

religion continues to pose an urgent threat to public health.

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens

At least he had some of the right enemies, even if he didn't do enough to earn them.

Meanwhile, the hoarse proponents of "intelligent design" would be laying siege to yet another school board, demanding that tripe be taught to children.

wrong. Religious opinion is wrong by definition. We can't avoid