quotes by Christopher Hitchens

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
— Christopher Hitchens

"Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse."
— Christopher Hitchens

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."
— Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer)

"...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 shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."
— Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer)

"The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement."
— Christopher Hitchens (Letters to a Young Contrarian)

"Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay."
— Christopher Hitchens

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
— Christopher Hitchens

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
— Christopher Hitchens

"Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and --since there is no other metaphor--also the soul.
"
— Christopher Hitchens

"Nothing optional--from homosexuality to adultery--is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in 'King Lear', the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash."
— Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)

"I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s:]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim--so modestly and so humbly--to possess. It is time to withdraw our "respect" from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world."
— Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer)

"What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof."
— Christopher Hitchens

"...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 shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."
— Christopher Hitchens

"The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose."
— Christopher Hitchens

"it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists"
— Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)

"When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair."
— Christopher Hitchens

"“Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there.”"
— Christopher Hitchens