Quotes By Christopher Hitchens

I've had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

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.

I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't ever have to rely on the press for my information.

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 felt Clinton represented the worst of the 1960s.

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.

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.

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.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

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

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.

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.

Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

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

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.

There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.

If you can talk, you can write.

When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,' and so forth, I switch off quite early.

I joined a small but growing post-Trotskyite Luxembourgist sect.

I don't think Romney is wacky at all, but religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things. Left on his own, Romney would never have said something like the Garden Of Eden was in Missouri, and will be again.

I'm not that keen on the idea of being unconscious.

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.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

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.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British interests involved.

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.

For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.