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Christopher Hitchens Quotes (1949-2011)
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About Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an-English-American journalist and writer. He contributed to the New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on a range of subjects, including politics, literature, and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure and public intellectual.
Best Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Christopher Hitchens quotes.
“[Religion] is innately irrational.”
“Compulsory bad taste isn’t a good cultural sign either.”
“Inanity is pretending that Afghanistan will go away if we leave.”
“I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.”
“That most risky and volatile of all things—a self-pitying majority.”
“An old definition of a gentleman: someone who is never rude except on purpose.”
“Intellectuals never sound more foolish than when posing as the last civilised man.”
“I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.”
“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.”
“The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.”
“We are not occupying Afghanistan, we are there as guests of a government, at their request.”
“Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by socialists in a nonsocialist society.”
Christopher Hitchens Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Christopher Hitchens quotes by topic.
Christopher Hitchens on Monarchy 5 quotes
“In today's Britain, the idea that there could be a Constitution more powerful - and even sacrosanct - than any crowned head or elected politician (thus abolishing the false antithesis between hereditary monarchs and capricious presidents) is thought of as a breathtakingly new and daring idea.”
Christopher Hitchens on Christianity 4 quotes
“Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!”
Christopher Hitchens on Atheism 3 quotes
“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”
Christopher Hitchens on God 2 quotes
“Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas.”
Christopher Hitchens on Religion 2 quotes
“Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas.”
Christopher Hitchens on Freethought 2 quotes
“Remember that it is 'free-thinking Jews,' not Jews as such, who are defined as the undesirables by T.S. Eliot in "After Strange Gods".”
Christopher Hitchens on Neutrality 2 quotes
“Doing nothing is not the absence of a policy; it is, in fact, the adoption of one. "Neutrality" favors the side with the biggest arsenal. "Nonintervention" is a form of interference.”
Christopher Hitchens on Bombs 2 quotes
“"Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age" was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals... But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed OUT of the Stone Age.”
Christopher Hitchens on War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) 2 quotes
“"Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age" was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals... But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed OUT of the Stone Age.”
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Christopher Hitchens on Islamophobia 2 quotes
“This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be “phobic.” A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.”
Christopher Hitchens on North Korea 2 quotes
“The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea's food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader.”
Christopher Hitchens on Assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 2 quotes
“Only a reopened congressional inquiry with subpoena power could determine whether there was any direct connection, apart from the self-evident ones of consistent statecraft attested by recurring reliable testimony, between the secret genocidal diplomacy of 1971 and the secret destabilizing diplomacy of 1975. The task of disproving such a connection, meanwhile, would appear to rest on those who believe that everything is an accident.”
What Christopher Hitchens Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Christopher Hitchens shared regarding contemporaries.
Christopher Hitchens on Michael Moore 3 quotes
“This is not at all like watching the implosion of an obvious huckster and jerk like Michael Moore, who would have made a perfectly good Brownshirt populist.”
Christopher Hitchens on Noam Chomsky 3 quotes
“Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations— he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically instinctual conviction.”
Christopher Hitchens on George W. Bush 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on George W. Bush →Christopher Hitchens on Jerry Falwell 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Jerry Falwell →Christopher Hitchens on Enver Hoxha 2 quotes
“... possibly the most Aztec-like of all Europe's remaining Stalinists.”
Christopher Hitchens on Hillary Clinton 2 quotes
“Why is Sen. Clinton, the spouse of the great influence-peddler, being nominated in the first place?”
Christopher Hitchens on George Galloway 2 quotes
“But he looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class-wideboy-and-proud-of-it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels - all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse like a lot of them are, puffed up like a turkey.”
Christopher Hitchens on Nick Clegg 2 quotes
“An officer candidate being interviewed for a posting on the British general staff was once asked to define the role of cavalry in modern warfare. He replied that it was to lend some color and dash to what would otherwise be a somewhat dreary and sordid occasion. Nick Clegg, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, is the equivalent of the cavalry in the case of Thursday’s British general election. Until his eruption onto the scene, the muddy battlefield was a dull trench war between two heavily armored divisions, each of them wearily familiar with the tactics and strategy of the other.”
Christopher Hitchens on Hezbollah 2 quotes
“In Greek legend there was a fighter named Antaeus who drew strength from the earth even when he was flung down. It took Hercules to work out his vulnerability as a wrestler. Hezbollah loves death, thrives on defeat and disaster, and is rapidly moving from being a state within a state to becoming the master of what was once the most cosmopolitan and democratic country in the Middle East. Meanwhile, a former superpower—no Hercules—is permitting itself to be made a hostage and laughing-stock by a squalid factional fight within the Israeli right wing involving the time and scale of petty land theft by zealots and fanatics. Only a few years from now, this, too, will seem hard to believe, as well as shameful and unpardonable.”
Christopher Hitchens on Bill Clinton
“"A f---inng rapist, a war criminal, and a pathological liar."”
Christopher Hitchens on Sam Harris
Quotes About Christopher Hitchens
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Christopher Hitchens from others.
Christopher Buckley on Christopher Hitchens
Alex Callinicos on Christopher Hitchens
“It was from him that I first learned, often with the force of revelation, many of the main ideas of the Marxist tradition.”
Noam Chomsky on Christopher Hitchens
“Since Hitchens evidently does not take what he is writing seriously, there is no reason for anyone else to do so. The fair and sensible reaction is to treat all of this as some aberration, and to await the return of the author to the important work that he has often done in the past.”
Juan Cole on Christopher Hitchens
“The precise reason for Hitchens' theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel’s Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people. But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.”
Richard Dawkins on Christopher Hitchens
“Eloquent, witty, literate, intelligent, knowledgeable, brave, erudite, hard-working, honest (who could forget his clean-through skewering of Mother Teresa's hypocrisy?), arguably the most formidable debater alive today yet at the same time the most gentlemanly, Christopher Hitchens is a giant of the mind and a model of courage.”
Daniel Dennett on Christopher Hitchens
“So only atheists are in a comfortable position to cast the first stone, and Christopher Hitchens, in "God Is Not Great," relishes the role. He has the credentials, as both a combative journalist and a surprisingly erudite literary scholar, and he wants to break the diplomacy barrier and expose the preposterous presumptions and ignoble machinations that stain the history of all religions, bringing discredit that tends to get magnified over the years by a persistent pattern of coverup, veils of illusion, and denial of one design or another. These efforts at obfuscation are quite transparent under Hitchens' s merciless scrutiny, and the results are often quite comical.”
Dinesh D'Souza "Christopher Hitchens takes aim at god on Christopher Hitchens
“Hitchens is also a militant atheist, or as he prefers to term it "anti-theist." I wish it were not so, because I'd love to have Hitchens' rapier wit and bohemian elegance on our side.”
Roger Ebert on Christopher Hitchens
“The man can write. He has lived a life. He has seen for himself, making it a point to travel regularly to dangerous and wretched nations. He has been a man of political passion, beginning first as a Trotskyite and becoming in recent years a supporter of the Neocon war in Iraq. … He exists as that most daring of writers, a freelance intellectual. He's a good speaker, can be funny, has bad teeth, is passably good-looking, and is at no pains to be a charmer.”
The Economist on Christopher Hitchens
“A short list of the greatest living conversationalists in English would probably have to include Christopher Hitchens....Great brilliance, fantastic powers of recall and quick wit are clearly valuable in sustaining conversation at these cosmic levels. Charm may be helpful too....”
Niall Ferguson on Christopher Hitchens
“The question is whether there can be any progress of the mind in a secular world. That is to say, if we turn away from the ethical teachings of Christ, or for that matter Muhammad, what is left to guide us? What incentive do we have to be good if there is no afterlife? The problem that militant atheists confront, including recent popularisers of atheism like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, is that there isn’t really a very good answer to that.”
Norman Finkelstein on Christopher Hitchens 2 quotes
“Hitchens maintains that that "there is a close fit between the democratically minded and the pro-American" in the Middle East - like "President for Life" Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan...that [referring to 9/11] "Washington finally grasped that "there were `root causes behind the murder-attacks" [emphasis in original] (but didn't Hitchens ridicule any allusion to "root causes" as totalitarian apologetics?)...that "racism" is "anti-American as nearly as possible by definition"...that "evil" can be defined as "the surplus value of the psychopath"...is there a Bartlett's for worst quotations?”
George Galloway on Christopher Hitchens 2 quotes
“Mr Hitchens's policy has succeeded in making 10,000 new Bin Ladens.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Christopher Hitchens
“Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
“BUSH IS NOT GREAT (HE'S MARVELLOUS!)”
“Many stupid people refuse to believe in a supreme power. I felt like that once but then I had a moment of revelation when I realised that everyone was talking nonsense and that there was an all-powerful benign intelligence that controlled our destinies. The ignorant and uneducated blamed Him for allowing wars in which thousands died or floods in which people's homes were swept away while He merely looked on. "Why does He allow evil to happen?" they asked, as if this was a sensible question. But it isn't. The fact remains that George Bush does exist. Although He moves in mysterious ways and His sayings are sometimes difficult to comprehend, if we have faith in George Bush all will be revealed and our lives will be transformed. We could not wish for more.”
“Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of those attempting to see something suspect, or even less than laudable, in Dick Cheney’s entirely justified, indeed, necessary, shooting of Harry Whittington. According to no less an authority than the so-called ‘Daily’ Kos, Mr Whittington apparently had a ‘right’ (granted by whom?) to wander, uncalled for and unmarked, directly into the sites of the man who was praised for his shooting by no less an authority than Lee ‘Harvey’ Oswald, back in the days when the Democratic Party still fought against totalitarianism, before the Jihadist wing of the extremist party of the Michael Moore faction staged their grisly coup ‘d’etat’ (a French word meaning, originally ‘Islamo-jihadist of the Left’ [...] but no less an authority than an old friend of mine who works and fights high up in the upper echelons of the so called state ‘department’ a man entirely untouched by the vagaries and conspiracies of the thuggish authoritarianism of the so called ‘C’ IA which ran through the cobbled streets of the State like a veritable whirlwind of Reaganite self-certainty, disenobling the watery flow of power from that much vaunted fountain of secularism best known as the white ‘house’ to those too ignorant to realise its true role as the ‘house’ of the illuminati: as this man, to repeat, told me, myself, and, indeed, I (or as it were, we) this Mr Whittington was on his way, even as Dick unleashed his mighty cannon, to buy uranium from Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, who are, as we speak, meeting on the so called ‘far’ side of the moon in order to unveil a proto-’ji’ hadist empire of neo-caliphatinism a word that, were it to be real, would be no less real than the threat of apres-jihadist terror that my good friend ‘dick’ had the temerity, indeed, the accuracy, to stop.”
About Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an-English-American journalist and writer. He contributed to the New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on a range of subjects, including politics, literature, and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure and public intellectual.