Christopher Hitchens - People Quotes

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In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you'll need religion.

Christopher Hitchens
If god really wanted people to be free of [wicked thoughts], he should have taken more care to invent a different species.

Christopher Hitchens
When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen

Christopher Hitchens
People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.

Christopher Hitchens
It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.

Christopher Hitchens
Today I want to puke when I hear the word 'radical' applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.

Christopher Hitchens
It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists

Christopher Hitchens
Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

Christopher Hitchens
Alcohol makes other people less tedious and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing.

Christopher Hitchens
Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience.

Christopher Hitchens
For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going.

Christopher Hitchens
The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity

Christopher Hitchens
Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.

Christopher Hitchens
The polls undoubtedly help to decide what people think, but their most important long-term influence may be on how people think. The interrogative process is very distinctly weighted against the asking of an intelligent question or the recording of a thoughtful answer.

Christopher Hitchens
In particular, it is absurd to hope to banish envy of other people's possessions or fortunes, if only because the spirit of envy can lead to emulation and ambition and have positive consequences.

Christopher Hitchens