Christopher Hitchens quotes - page 16

Charlton Heston: "Yes indeed I can (...). Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, Russia, uh... Iran." (Christopher Hitchens)
Cain: "Mr Hitchens, if I may interject, I'm not sure [about the relevance] of the instantaneous command of the geography of a region." View quote
Christopher Hitchens
If you're actually certain that you're hitting only a concentration of enemy troops... then it's pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they're bearing a Koran over their heart, it'll go straight through that, too. So they won't be able to say, 'Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens: "Let me ask a question to Mr Heston: can he tell me, clockwise, what countries have frontiers and borders with Iraq, starting from Kuwait?" View quote
Christopher Hitchens
In their last ditch, the royalists object that this all too bloodless and practical; that people need and want the element of magic and fantasy. Nobody wants life to be charmless. But the element of fantasy and magic is as primitive as it is authentic, and there are good reasons why it should not come from the state. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be "me." View quote
Christopher Hitchens
To the dumb question "Why me?" View quote
Christopher Hitchens
You seem to be angry with religion, angry with god. Am I wrong in my perception? View quote
Christopher Hitchens
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. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
'WASP' is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it's inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not? (Christopher Hitchens)
My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven't elected a new one. There's no one in the world who is infallible for those weeks. And you know, I don't miss it. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
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!' View quote
Christopher Hitchens
I'm not that keen on the idea of being unconscious. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
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. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
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. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
I've proved to be as difficult to convert as I am to hypnotize. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
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. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren't always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice. (Christopher Hitchens)
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. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
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.' View quote
Christopher Hitchens
The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don't see why anybody does. View quote
Christopher Hitchens