Christopher Hitchens Quotes

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

I retain what’s interesting to me, but I don’t have a lot of strategic depth.

I became a journalist because one didn’t have to specialise.

Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion.

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

All the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.

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.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, ‘Well, good on you. See you there.’

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

I like surprises.

I vote and I do jury duty.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.