Quotes by Christopher Hitchens

About Christopher Hitchens:

Christopher Eric Hitchens was an English author, literary critic, and journalist who spent much of his career in the United States and became an American citizen.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé 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

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even c...

Christopher Hitchens

In Africa, there is a birthrate trap: a higher standard of living will lead to smaller families but smaller families will not lead to a higher standard of living.

Christopher Hitchens

When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.

Christopher Hitchens

There is almost no country in Africa where it is not essential to know to which tribe, or which subgroup of which tribe, the president belongs. From this single piece of information you can trace the lines of patronage and allegiance that define the ...

Christopher Hitchens

What struck me, in reading the reports from Sri Lanka, was the mild disgrace of belonging to our imperfectly evolved species in the first place. People who had just seen their neighbors swept away would tell the reporters that they knew a judgment ha...

Christopher Hitchens

As he once wrote of Kipling, his own enduring influence can be measured by a number of terms and phrases—doublethink, thought police, 'Some animals are more equal than others'—that he embedded in our language and in our minds. In Orwell's own min...

Christopher Hitchens

I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit.

Christopher Hitchens

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

Christopher Hitchens

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?

Christopher Hitchens

The prince's official job description as king will be 'defender of the faith,' which currently means the state-financed absurdity of the Anglican Church, but he has more than once said publicly that he wants to be anointed as defender of all faiths�...

Christopher Hitchens

It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until 'Juneteenth'. There may be those in Texas now who believe they can insulate their state—a state that had its own courageous re...

Christopher Hitchens

Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that a...

Christopher Hitchens

You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the gl...

Christopher Hitchens

A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by thei...

Christopher Hitchens

We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and ...

Christopher Hitchens

In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption alt...

Christopher Hitchens

There either is a god or there is not; there is a 'design' or not.

Christopher Hitchens

The sad thing is that so many people, in the belief that the universe is organized to suit and influence them, are willing to sacrifice even the slight cranial capacity with which evolution has equipped us.

Christopher Hitchens

I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really does believe this, his lethargy an...

Christopher Hitchens

In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [ ], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Wil...

Christopher Hitchens

Author Bio

  • NameChristopher Hitchens
  • DescriptionBritish American author and journalist
  • BornApril 13, 1949
  • DiedDecember 15, 2011
  • CountryUnited Kingdom; United States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Writer; Essayist; Autobiographer
  • AwardsRichard Dawkins Award