Christopher Hitchens quotes - page 3

We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes. (Christopher Hitchens)
Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam! View quote
Christopher Hitchens
What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
I, for one, will not have [the Vietcong] insulted by any comparison to the forces of Zarqawi, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the criminal underworld now arrayed against us. These depraved elements are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
And yet, I wake up every day to a sensation of pervading disgust and annoyance. I probably ought to carry around some kind of thermometer or other instrument, to keep checking that I am not falling prey to premature curmudgeonhood. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Three words for those who want to put the Christ back in Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Every campaign, Garry Wills once wrote, "taught Nixon the same lesson: mobilize resentment against those in power." History taught the same to many conservative and reactionary populist movements, whose real attitude to those in power and authority was one of a servile, envious, vicarious adoration. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
(Howard) Dean is a raving nut bag...a raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag...I and a few other people saw that he should be destroyed. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
David Irving is not just a Fascist historian. He is also a great historian of Fascism. (Christopher Hitchens)
It [Obama's Nobel peace prize] would be like giving someone an Oscar in the hope that it would encourage them to make a decent motion picture. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
The enormous dynamic and creative, as well as destructive energy of capitalism... is written up with more praise and more respect by Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto than probably by anyone since. I don't think anyone has ever said so precisely and with such awed admiration how great capitalism is, how inventive, how innovative, how dynamic, how much force of creativity it unleashes. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
It must be obvious to anyone who can think at all that the charges against the Hussein regime are, as concerns arsenals of genocidal weaponry, true. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Many of the points made by the antiwar movement have been consciously assimilated by the Pentagon and its lawyers and advisers. Precision weaponry is good in itself, but its ability to discriminate is improving and will continue to improve. Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
It was not for the sake of oil that the risky decision to cease this corrupt coexistence was made. But at least now the Iraqi people have a chance of controlling their own main resource, and it will be our task to ensure that the funding and revenue are transparent instead of opaque. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
The pornography of tough-mindedness, covert action, and preparedness for "peace through strength" has had a predictably hypnotic effect on the legislative branch, turning it from legal watchdog to lapdog. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul. (Christopher Hitchens)
The transformation of part of the northern part of this continent into "America" inaugurated a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation, and thus deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto, with or without the participation of those who wish they had never been born. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
No possible future government in Kabul can be worse than the Taliban, and no thinkable future government would allow the level of Al Qaeda gangsterism to recur. So the outcome is proportionate and congruent with international principles of self-defense. View quote
Christopher Hitchens