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. – 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. – Christopher Hitchens
Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather cheering one. – Christopher Hitchens
The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it’s American or British interests involved. – Christopher Hitchens
Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas. – Christopher Hitchens
Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. – Christopher Hitchens
I’ve been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world. – Christopher Hitchens
One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. – Christopher Hitchens
It’s impossible, I think, however much I’d become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don’t think I’d ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with. – 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. – Christopher Hitchens
I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second. – Christopher Hitchens
Littera scripta manet – ‘The written word will remain’. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me. – Christopher Hitchens
To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world? – Christopher Hitchens
‘Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age’ was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age. – Christopher Hitchens
Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy. – Christopher Hitchens
I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor. – Christopher Hitchens
My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd. – Christopher Hitchens
One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has. – Christopher Hitchens
And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home. – 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
The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal. – Christopher Hitchens
Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. – 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. – Christopher Hitchens