Favourite Hitchens Quotes

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Forgive me if there is a thread on this already, as I could not find one.

Christopher Hitchens wrote:

Our prefrontal lobes are too small. Much too small. That's a problem of the birth canal, I'm very sorry to say for those that like their birth canals... tight.

Mark200

There are too many to list. My favourite changes all the time. But one I just found recently was this:

About Sarah Palin: “She’s got no charisma of any kind, [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.”

Galvasean

"I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me."

"I look down on people with lesser forms of cancer than me"

To the bitter end Hitch! :pac:

robindch

Table Top Joe

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"

RichieC

the govener of texas when asked about teaching the bible in spanish replied; english was good enough for jesus and it's good enough for me...

EggsAckley

"Only some of which is true"

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Christopher Hitchens wrote:

A joke is not really a joke if it has to be clarified.

Taken from Love, Poverty & War when speaking about Kingsley Amis.

joseph brand

Hitchens' verdict on George W Bush: “He is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.”

“[O]wners 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 realise that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”

snafuk35

Hitchens spoke the truth about the moral depravity of the anti-war left:

If you examine the record of the so-called the anti-war movement in this country and imagine what would have happened had its counsel been listened to over the last 15 and more years, you would have a world in which the following would be the case:
Saddam Hussein would be the owner and occupier of Kuwait, he would have succeeded in the annexation, not merely the invasion, but the abolition of an Arab and Muslim state that was a member of the Arab League and of the United Nations. And with these resources as we now know because he lost that war, he was attempting to equip himself with the most terrifying arsenal that it was possible for him to lay his hands on. That's one consequence of anti-war politics, that's what would have happened.
In the meanwhile, Slobodan Milošević would have made Bosnia part of a greater Serbia, and Kosovo would have been ethnically cleansed and also annexed. The Taliban would be still in power in Afghanistan if the anti-war movement had been listened to, and al-Qaeda would still be their guests. And Saddam Hussein, with his crime family, would still be privately holding ownership over a terrorized people in a state that's been most aptly described as a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave underneath it.
Now if I had that record politically, I would be extremely modest, I wouldn't be demanding explanations from those of us who said it's about time that we stop this continual capitulation to dictatorship, to racism, to aggression and to totalitarian ideology. That we will not allow to be appeased in Iraq, the failures in Rwanda, and in Bosnia, and in Afghanistan, and elsewhere. And we take pride in having taken that position, and we take pride in our Iraqi and Kurdish friends who are conducting this struggle, on our behalves I should say.
Christopher Hitchens vs. George Galloway debate, New York City (2005-09-14)

robindch

A bunch of bitchens@Hitchens stuff has been moved to the "Bitch about Hitchens here" thread here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2056488462

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robindch wrote: »

A bunch of bitchens@Hitchens stuff has been moved to the "Bitch about Hitchens here" thread here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2056488462

I thought it was Dades who cleaned it up so I sent her a PM about my quote which wasn't related. No harm I'll post it again.

Christopher Hitchens wrote:

I did not, I wish to state, become a journalist because there was no other ‘profession' that would have me. I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.

Da Shins Kelly

"Alcohol makes other people less tedious."

pH

Anyone with a shiny new xmas Kindle (and an account on amazon.co.uk) can pickup God is not great for £0.99

robindch

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I thought it was Dades who cleaned it up so I sent her a PM

Her? Him! Ahem

nozzferrahhtoo

At the risk of being too sentimental my fave quote from hitchens had nothing to do with religion or war or torture or any of that annoying stuff that admittedly takes up most of my day.

My fave quote from him will be the one that took me like a sucker punch, being as it was nothing to do with any of the topics.... like religion.... that I spent my day trolling the internet to hear.... especially from his mouth....

It was when he described..... without ever having met me.... or now that he has left us.... without ever having the chance to meet me...... exactly how I feel about my own daughter who is at the time of writing this message now 16 months old.....

“To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.”

In one quote he managed to insult ALL of the religious people who "imagine" an almighty all caring father who will be there for them forever........

... but at the SAME time describe exactly what it feels to be a REAL father....

And whatever else you may think of the man.... and I assure you I wanted to take him up on a few points myself...... if there is ever another man who can put my own heart on my own sleeve in a single line like that.... I will happily fall on a sword for him... much as I would have if I thought I could have been the scape goat for his illness that the saviours of most religions claims to be for our shared sins....

.... by this I mean in AAI 2006 Hithens said the following words... words that I would have said to the cancer that took him from us...... from all of us.... if only I had the chance.... and the best quote I can close this post with were I to have the chance to say those words to his cancer myself....... the quote from the hitch that will stay with me forever....

" the three most beautiful words in the new secular dictionary "ayan hirshi ali"
It is considered by me and I hope by all of you a national disgrace
that in the capital city of a secular democracy republic
that our guest.... from holland... the first... i think... political refugee from western europe since 1945.... should have to go under armed guard to go about her business rather than be our most honoured guest.... And though it is not usual for me to be able to speak for the majority I think I can say.... .... that..... ....Ayan..... there isnt anyone in this room who wouldnt very proudly stand between you and anyone who wished you harm".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LKLeSKobcY

To give voice to a man like that I would have gladly stood in the way of that which caused him harm. It was not to be. But I will remember him forever from the two quotes above. Amen and god bless and as Daniel Dennett wrote "thank goodness" you were alive.

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This video contains too many quotes to put in here. Instead, I urge you to watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHjZqt6wg64

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"Stay on good terms with your inner Yossarian"

bnt

Here's a good one, recently quoted by Neil Peart of the band Rush:

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.