Christopher Hitchens Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Christopher Hitchens quotes, Christopher Hitchens sayings, and Christopher Hitchens proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

Perhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification. Christopher Hitchens
High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments. Christopher Hitchens
The problem with open-mindedness is that it can become empty-mindedness. Christopher Hitchens
There can be no progress without head-on confrontation. Christopher Hitchens
There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument. Christopher Hitchens
Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. Christopher Hitchens
Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries. Christopher Hitchens
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks. Christopher Hitchens
Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens. Christopher Hitchens
The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law. Christopher Hitchens
Unless a reincarnationist is willing to say there was a 'first generation' of souls created with the first humans, he is exposed to absurdity by the recency of human life on the planet. Christopher Hitchens
Teasing is very often a sign of inner misery. Christopher Hitchens
If you can charm everyone it means you don't care about anyone in particular. Christopher Hitchens
The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. Christopher Hitchens
Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it. Christopher Hitchens
The usual duty of the “intellectual” is to argue for complexity and to insist that phenomena in the world of ideas should not be sloganized or reduced to easily repeated formulae. Christopher Hitchens
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. Christopher Hitchens
Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all. Christopher Hitchens
Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes. Christopher Hitchens
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid. Christopher Hitchens
Dogma in power does have a unique chilling ingredient not exhibited by power, however ghastly, wielded for its own traditional sake. Christopher Hitchens
Instead, the polling business gives the patricians an idea of what the mob is thinking, and of how that thinking might be changed or, shall we say, "shaped." It is the essential weapon in the mastery of populism by the elite. Christopher Hitchens
A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral. Christopher Hitchens
But everybody agrees, somewhere in his heart, that there ought to be some connection between what you believe and how you behave, what you advocate for others and how you live yourself. Christopher Hitchens
You don’t say ‘they all do it’ unless you know you’ve been doing it too. Christopher Hitchens
Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. Christopher Hitchens
There can be no progress without head-on confrontation. Christopher Hitchens
Charity... is a form of condescension. Christopher Hitchens
What I do mind is the pitying glance, or the heavy sigh, that is deployed these days. I am not ready to be patronized, or condescended to, unless by someone of some eminence who has earned that right. And even then I regard it as a sign of weakness rather than strength. Christopher Hitchens
The unspoken agreement to concede the black community to the sway of the pulpit is itself a form of racist condescension. Christopher Hitchens