- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Impossible
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- Nov 07, 2020
Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
- Bible
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- Nov 07, 2020
Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.
- Counterparts
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- Nov 07, 2020
Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars.
- Only
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- Nov 07, 2020
Ronald Reagan said that he sought a Star Wars defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.
- Boring
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,' and so forth, I switch off quite early.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
Chemotherapy isn't good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well that is a good thing because it's supposed to be poison. If it's making the tumor feel this queasy, then I'm OK with it.'
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.
- Attitude
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I go to the clinic next and sit with a tube in my arm and watch the poison go in, I'm in an attitude of abject passivity. It doesn't feel like fighting at all; it just feels like submitting.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it's a certainty you'll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it's an awful process.
- Nov 07, 2020
I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
- Home
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- Nov 07, 2020
And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don't think anyone in my family would really feel I'd done them an injustice by saying that. We didn't see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don't do any good, but they don't necessarily do any harm. It's touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I've got my just desserts.
- I Am
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- Nov 07, 2020
Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.
- Language
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- Nov 07, 2020
You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it's the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there's not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.
- Plant
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- Nov 07, 2020
One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Littera scripta manet - 'The written word will remain'. That's true, but it won't be that much comfort to me.
- God
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- Nov 07, 2020
Well, we can't say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.'
- Doing
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- Nov 07, 2020
I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write? But that fortunately hasn't proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.
- Constitution
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I'm still quite robust.
- Face
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- Nov 07, 2020
Well, I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
- Health
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- Nov 07, 2020
Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's not at all good when your cancer is 'palpable' from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn't even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in.
- Notice
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- Nov 07, 2020
I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn't even notice.
- Gravely
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- Nov 07, 2020
I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.
- Father
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Light
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- Nov 07, 2020
In one way, I suppose, I have been 'in denial' for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.
- Live
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- Nov 07, 2020
I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?
- Nov 07, 2020
I was becoming post-ideological.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself.
- My Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.
- Idea
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm not that keen on the idea of being unconscious.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Conservative
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm not a conservative of any kind.
- Making
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- Nov 07, 2020
A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.
- Jury
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- Nov 07, 2020
I vote and I do jury duty.
- Exile
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- Nov 07, 2020
The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.
- Gentleman
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- Nov 07, 2020
A gentleman is never rude except on purpose - I can honestly be nasty sober, believe you me.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, 'He is not a lush.' That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, 'Look!'
- Proud
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I look back on what I did for the Left, I'm in a small way quite proud of some of it - I only wish I'd done more.
- Big
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- Nov 07, 2020
There's a big difference, as I'm sure you know, it's a slightly manneristic one, between people of the '60s and people of '68. Being a soixante-huitard - it's so nice to have a French word for it - is very different from just having happened to been a baby boomer in the '60s.
- Eruption
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- Nov 07, 2020
I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.
- Change
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.
- Wanted
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- Nov 07, 2020
I wanted to write.
- America
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- Nov 07, 2020
The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.
- Mistake
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- Nov 07, 2020
Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.
- Many
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- Nov 07, 2020
I still think like a Marxist in many ways.
- History
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think the materialist conception of history is valid.
- Everything
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- Nov 07, 2020
Of course, I do everything for money.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.
- Father
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- Nov 07, 2020
Even if I accepted that Jesus - like almost every other prophet on record - was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.
- Even
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.
- Morality
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- Nov 07, 2020
Ordinary morality is innate in my view.
- Considerable
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- Nov 07, 2020
Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.
- Hell
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- Nov 07, 2020
To terrify children with the image of hell... to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope.
- Talk
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- Nov 07, 2020
If you can talk, you can write.
- Nov 07, 2020
I'm terrified of losing my voice.
- Defeat
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.
- Boring
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- Nov 07, 2020
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can't make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.
- Most
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- Nov 07, 2020
I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
- Church
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.
- Enemy
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- Nov 07, 2020
The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.
- Go
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- Nov 07, 2020
I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.
- Perfect
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don't see why that's considered a normal thing.
- Interesting
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- Nov 07, 2020
I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.
- Debate
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- Nov 07, 2020
You can only have one aim per debate.
- Long
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- Nov 07, 2020
Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
- Changed
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- Nov 07, 2020
I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.
- Even
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- Nov 07, 2020
Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
Well, I'll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.
- Horror
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.
- Children
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and give them some say in how many children they'll have, immediately the floor will rise.
- Never
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Argument
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- Nov 07, 2020
If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.
- Cognitive
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- Nov 07, 2020
There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.
- Pakistan
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- Nov 07, 2020
Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.
- Holy
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- Nov 07, 2020
The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.
- Emancipate
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- Nov 07, 2020
If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it's a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.
- Education
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- Nov 07, 2020