There is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it. - Christopher Hitchens
Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung. - Christopher Hitchens
Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries. - Christopher Hitchens
Orwell wrote easily and well about small humane pursuits, such as bird watching, gardening and cooking, and did not despise popular pleasures like pubs and vulgar seaside resorts. In many ways, his investigations into ordinary life and activity prefigure what we now call 'cultural studies. - Christopher Hitchens
[I]f you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don't think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad. - Christopher Hitchens
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world? - Christopher Hitchens
There either is a god or there is not; there is a 'design' or not. - Christopher Hitchens
I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument. - Christopher Hitchens
Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like. - Christopher Hitchens
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. - Christopher Hitchens
I think that people's sexual preferences are a legitimate subject for humour, dirty humour if at all possible. - Christopher Hitchens
In Africa, there is a birthrate trap: a higher standard of living will lead to smaller families but smaller families will not lead to a higher standard of living. - Christopher Hitchens
What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'? - Christopher Hitchens
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. - Christopher Hitchens
If you say you're a unifier, you expect and usually get applause. I'm a divider. Politics is division by definition, if there was no disagreement there would be no politics. The illusion of unity isn't worth having, and is anyways unattainable. - Christopher Hitchens
My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass. - Christopher Hitchens
There is almost no country in Africa where it is not essential to know to which tribe, or which subgroup of which tribe, the president belongs. From this single piece of information you can trace the lines of patronage and allegiance that define the state. - Christopher Hitchens
[He]said something that made it impossible to continue working for him.[The exact words were]You're fired. - Christopher Hitchens
Don’t swallow your moral code in tablet form. - Christopher Hitchens
I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit. - Christopher Hitchens
Bad habits have brought me this far: why change such a tried-and-true formula? - Christopher Hitchens
We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge. - Christopher Hitchens
The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies. - Christopher Hitchens
Unless a reincarnationist is willing to say there was a 'first generation' of souls created with the first humans, he is exposed to absurdity by the recency of human life on the planet. - Christopher Hitchens
Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed. - Christopher Hitchens
To take a side against Rushdie, or to be neutral and evasive about him in the name of some vaguely sensitive ecumenical conscience, is to stand against those who try to incubate a Reformation in the Muslim world. - Christopher Hitchens
Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. - Christopher Hitchens
Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that. - Christopher Hitchens
You don’t so much as become an atheist as find out that’s what you are. There’s no moment of conversion. You don’t suddenly think ‘I don’t believe this anymore.’ You essentially find you don’t believe it. - Christopher Hitchens
On page 607, alluding to the end of my first marriage (and carefully remembering to state that that's none of his business), he very sweetly says that I 'might leave a wife, but not a friend.' Nice try. Neat smear. But he shouldn't be so sure.... - Christopher Hitchens
Bad as political fiction can be, there is always a politician prepared to make it look artistic by comparison. - Christopher Hitchens
You have to choose your future regrets. - Christopher Hitchens
How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape. - Christopher Hitchens
Don't write in to ask whether I would prefer Gingrich to Clinton. Ask, rather, whether Clinton prefers Gingrich to you. Go triangulate yourself. - Christopher Hitchens
What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral. - Christopher Hitchens
I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. - Christopher Hitchens
If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox. - Christopher Hitchens
It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse. - Christopher Hitchens
The sad thing is that so many people, in the belief that the universe is organized to suit and influence them, are willing to sacrifice even the slight cranial capacity with which evolution has equipped us. - Christopher Hitchens
To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off - Christopher Hitchens
The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose. - Christopher Hitchens
I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyone who falls for Camelot. - Christopher Hitchens
The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent. - Christopher Hitchens
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. - Hitchens 3:16 - Christopher Hitchens