Christopher Hitchens Quotes

A collection of quotes by Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a highly influential British-American author, journalist, and public intellectual. Known for his sharp wit, fearless criticism, and contrarian views, Hitchens greatly contributed to political and cultural discussions throughout his career.

Born in Portsmouth, England, Hitchens attended the prestigious Balliol College, Oxford, where he became involved in left-wing politics and developed his writing skills. In the late 1970s, he moved to the United States and began working as a correspondent for various publications, including The Nation and Vanity Fair. He established himself as an incisive and bold writer, tackling a wide range of topics such as religion, literature, history, and foreign policy.

Hitchens gained notoriety for his outspoken atheism and criticism of organized religion, particularly in his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." He was a fervent advocate for secularism, freedom of expression, and human rights. Hitchens also strongly opposed totalitarian regimes and was an ardent supporter of the Iraq War, a stance that was met with both admiration and criticism.

Throughout his career, Hitchens authored numerous books, including "Letters to a Young Contrarian" and "Hitch-22: A Memoir." He was a regular contributor to various media outlets and engaged in lively debates and discussions on television and in public forums.

Christopher Hitchens passed away in 2011, leaving behind a profound intellectual legacy and a reputation as one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of his time.

I'm quite convinced in my own mind that those who were argui

I'm quite convinced in my own mind that those who were arguing that was a more immediate one than some believed - were I'm sure convinced that they were right on fact, I don't think they were making it up. So as to lying, I don't think it has been established that any lies were told.

Christopher Hitchens

Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in t

Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But there are a number of occasions when it suits him to pose as a sort of Candide: naive, and ill-prepared for and easily unhorsed by events. No doubt this pose costs him something in point of self-esteem. It is a pose, furthermore, which he often adopts at precisely the time when the record shows him to be knowledgeable, and when knowledge or foreknowledge would also confront him with charges of responsibility or complicity.

Christopher Hitchens

Crime Self Esteem Voltaire Cyprus Henry Kissinger Candide War Crimes Turkey Naivete Turkish Invasion Of Cyprus

For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy

For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.

Christopher Hitchens

(Howard) Dean is a raving nut bag...a raving, sinister, dema

(Howard) Dean is a raving nut bag...a raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag...I and a few other people saw that he should be destroyed.

Christopher Hitchens

One of the juiciest pleasures of life is to be able to salut

One of the juiciest pleasures of life is to be able to salute and embrace, as elected leaders and honored representatives, people whom you first met when they were on the run or in exile or (like Adam) in and out of jail. I was to have this experience again, and I hope to have it many more times in the future: it sometimes allows me to feel that life is full of point.

Christopher Hitchens

Life Politics Dissent Adam Michnik

Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often a

Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact.

Christopher Hitchens

Terrorism Islamism Osama Bin Laden Death Threats Jihadism Personal Questions

Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by soc

Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by socialists in a nonsocialist society.

Christopher Hitchens

There is some relationship between the hunger for truth and

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

Truth Language Literature Literary Criticism Doris Lessing

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribal

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.

Christopher Hitchens

Religion Women Conscience

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child ha

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

Christopher Hitchens

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagÃ© m

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagÃ© 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

Politics Apathy Neutrality Activism

Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for

Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries.

Christopher Hitchens

Terrorism Revolution Dictatorship Revolutionary State Terrorism

I don't mind admitting that I, too, have watched Hilton unde

I don't mind admitting that I, too, have watched Hilton undergoing the sexual act. I phrase it as crudely as that because it was one of the least erotic such sequences I have ever seen. She seemed to know what was expected of her and to manifest some hard-won expertise, but I could almost have believed that she was drugged. At no point did her facial expression match even the simulacrum of lovemaking.

Christopher Hitchens

Sex Pornography Celebrity Sex Tapes Eroticism Paris Hilton

It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and militar

It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and military war against this enemy ran into difficulties, that it was 'a war without end.' I never saw the point of this plaintive objection. The war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war. In protean forms, it is fought and refought in every country and every generation. In bin Ladenism we confront again the awful combination of the highly authoritarian personality with the chaotically nihilist and anarchic one. Temporary victories can be registered against this, but not permanent ones. As Bertold Brecht's character says over the corpse of the terrible Arturo Ui, the bitch that bore him is always in heat. But it is in this struggle that we develop the muscles and sinews that enable us to defend civilization, and the moral courage to name it as something worth fighting for.

Christopher Hitchens

War Superstition Totalitarianism Nihilism Islamism Authoritarianism Osama Bin Laden Al Qaeda Bertold Brecht

The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless

The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.

Christopher Hitchens

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able t

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers.

Christopher Hitchens

God Israel Israeli Palestinian Conflict Jews Palestine Palestinians Jerusalem Moses Oil Mediterranean Basin Ottoman Empire

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consol

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.

Christopher Hitchens

In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said]

In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.

Christopher Hitchens

Religion Atheism Humility Christianity Edward Said Palestine London Rushdie

As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish fo

As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.

Christopher Hitchens

Democracy Afghanistan Al Qaeda Egypt Algeria Central Intelligence Agency Daniel Lapin Federal Bureau Of Investigation

Revolution from above, in some states and cases, is [...] of

Revolution from above, in some states and cases, is [...] often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.

Christopher Hitchens

Politics Conservatism Revolution Iraq War Neoconservatism