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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
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Beware The Irrational, However

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.
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Topic
Courage
Selfish
Science
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War
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Violence
The Polls Undoubtedly Help To Decide What People Think, But Their Most Important Long-term Influence May Be On How People Think. The Interrogative Process Is Very Distinctly Weighted Against The Asking Of An Intelligent Question Or The Recording Of A Thoughtful Answer.
Thoughtful
Intelligent
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The Only Real Radicalism In Our Time Will Come As It Always Has—from People Who Insist On Thinking For Themselves And Who Reject Party-mindedness.
Real
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Thinking
The Offer Of Certainty, The Offer Of Complete Security, The Offer Of An Impermeable Faith That Can’t Give Way, Is An Offer Of Something Not Worth Having. I Want To Live My Life Taking The Risk All The Time That I Don’t Know Anything Like Enough Yet; That I Haven’t Understood Enough; That I Can’t Know Enough; That I’m Always Hungrily Operating On The Margins Of A Potentially Great Harvest Of Future Knowledge And Wisdom. I Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way.
Giving
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Want
The Moment Of Near Despair Is Quite Often The Moment That Precedes Courage.
Despair
Moments
The Most Educated Person In The World Now Has To Admit-- I Shall Not Say Confess-- That He Or She Knows Less And Less But At Least Knows Less And Less About More And More.
World
Educated
Persons
There Is No Reason At All Why There Aren't Enough People To Guard New Orleans And To Help Stabilise Baghdad.
New Orleans
People
Baghdad
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.
Inspirational
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The People Who Tend To Raise Antiwar Slogans Will Do So Generally When It's American Or British Interests Involved.
People
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I Have Not Been Able To Discover Whether There Exists A Precise French Equivalent For The Common Anglo-american Expression 'killing Time.' It's A Very Crass And Breezy Expression, When You Ponder It For A Moment, Considering That Time, After All, Is Killing Us.
Expression
Able
Common
The One Unforgivable Sin Is To Be Boring.
Unforgivable Sin
Sin
Boring
The Faithful Believe That Certain Truths Have Been 'revealed.' The Skeptics And Secularists Believe That Truth Is Only To Be Sought By Free Inquiry And Trial And Error. Only One Of Those Positions Is Dogmatic.
Believe
Errors
Faithful
You Don't Say 'they All Do It' Unless You Know You've Been Doing It Too.
Knows
It Is Not That There Are No Certainties, It Is That It Is An Absolute Certainty That There Are No Certainties.
Absolute Certainty
Certainty
Absolutes
He's A Man [george W. Bush] Who Is Lucky To Be Governor Of Texas. He Is A Man Who Is Unusually Incurious, Abnormally Unintelligent, Amazingly Inarticulate, Fantastically Uncultured, Extraordinarily Uneducated, And Apparently Quite Proud Of All These Things.
Men
Texas
Proud
Literature, Not Scripture, Sustains The Mind And - Since There Is No Other Metaphor - Also The Soul.
Soul
Mind
Literature
You Have To Choose Your Future Regrets.
Regret
Your Future
Since It Is Obviously Inconceivable That All Religions Can Be Right, The Most Reasonable Conclusion Is That They Are All Wrong.
Atheist
Atheism
Conclusion
I'd Always Somehow Felt Slightly As If I'd Been Born In The Wrong Country.
Country
Born
Felt
It's The Professional Deformation Of Many Writers, And Has Ruined Not A Few. (i Remember Kingsley Amis, Himself No Slouch, Saying That He Could Tell On What Page Of The Novel Paul Scott Had Reached For The Bottle And Thrown Caution To The Winds.)
Writing
Wind
Bottles
Do I Fear Death? No, I Am Not Afraid Of Being Dead Because There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of, I Won't Know It. I Fear Dying, Of Dying I Feel A Sense Of Waste About It And I Fear A Sordid Death, Where I Am Incapacitated Or Imbecilic At The End Which Isn't Something To Be Afraid Of, It's Something To Be Terrified Of.
Fear
Dying
Waste
A Gentleman Is Never Rude Except On Purpose - I Can Honestly Be Nasty Sober, Believe You Me.
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Rude
Gentleman
If People I've Never Met Or Don't Know Say That What I've Written Or Done Or Said Means Anything To Them, Then I'm Happy To Take It At Face Value, For Once. It Cheers Me Up.
Cheer
Mean
People
The Great Thing About The United States And The Historically Magnetic Effect It Has Had On A Lot Of People Like Me Is Its Generosity, To Put It Simply.
Generosity
People
United States
Never Ask While You Are Doing It If What You Are Doing Is Fun. Don't Introduce Even Your Most Reliably Witty Acquaintance As Someone Who Will Set The Table On A Roar.
Witty
Fun
Tables
If God Really Wanted People To Be Free Of [wicked Thoughts], He Should Have Taken More Care To Invent A Different Species.
Taken
Should Have
People
As I've Said Before, You Can Be An Atheist And Anything You Like.
Atheist
Said
I Think The Socialist Movement, By Removing Many, Many People From Grinding Stagnation And Poverty And Overwork, Does Enable People Not Just To Lead Better Lives But To Be Better People.
Thinking
People
Doe
Nonintervention Does Not Mean That Nothing Happens. It Means That Something Else Happens.
Mean
Doe
Anti War
Human Beings Are Pattern-seeking Animals Who Will Prefer Even A Bad Theory Or A Conspiracy Theory To No Theory At All.
Animal
Patterns
Conspiracy
No Moral Person Would Do Such A Thing Unless They Thought It Was Divinely Warranted.
Religion
Moral
Persons
Whenever I Hear Some Bigmouth In Washington Or The Christian Heartland Banging On About The Evils Of Sodomy Or Whatever, I Mentally Enter His Name In My Notebook And Contentedly Set My Watch. Sooner Rather Than Later, He Will Be Discovered Down On His Weary And Well-worn Old Knees In Some Dreary Motel Or Latrine, With An Expired Visa Card, Having Tried To Pay Well Over The Odds To Be Peed Upon By Some Apache Transvestite.
Notebook
Christian
Names
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Christian
Fall
Interesting
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Struggle
Sleep
Anxiety
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Religious
Lying
Writing
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Depressing
Stupid
Home
Henry Kissinger Should Have The Door Shut In His Face By Every Decent Person And Should Be Shamed, Ostracized And Excluded.
Doors
Should Have
Faces
The Koran Shows Every Sign Of Being Thrown Together By Human Beings, As Do All The Other Holy Books.
Book
Together
Holy
If You Think That The Intifada In France Is About Housing, Go And Try Covering The Story Wearing A Yarmulka .
Thinking
Trying
Covering
To Describe This Film As Dishonest And Demagogic Would Almost Be To Promote Those Terms To The Level Of Respectability. To Describe This Film As A Piece Of Crap Would Be To Run The Risk Of A Discourse That Would Never Again Rise Above The Excremental. To Describe It As An Exercise In Facile Crowd-pleasing Would Be Too Obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 Is A Sinister Exercise In Moral Frivolity, Crudely Disguised As An Exercise In Seriousness.
Running
Exercise
Risk
There Are People Who Cannot Forget, As Neither Do I, The Lesson Of The Years Of The Indochina War. Which Was, First, That The State Is Capable Of Being A Murderer. A Mass Murderer, And A Conspirator And A Liar.
War
Liars
Years
God Did Not Create Man In His Own Image. Evidently, It Was Quite The Other Way About, Which Is The Painless Explanation For The Profusion Of Gods And Religions, And The Fratricide Both Between And Among Faiths, That We See All About Us And That Has So Retarded The Development Of Civilization.
God
Men
Civilization
I'm Afraid The Ss's Relationship With The Catholic Church Is Something The Church Still Has To Deal With And Does Not Deny.
Catholic
Church
Doe
Authors Who Moan With Praise For Their Editors Always Seem To Reek Slightly Of The Stockholm Syndrome.
Writing
Editors
Praise
Flaubert Was Right When He Said That Our Use Of Language Is Like A Cracked Kettle On Which We Bang Out Tunes For Bears To Dance To, While All The Time We Need To Move The Very Stars To Pity.
Stars
Moving
Bangs
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Strong
Would Be
Alive
[p]erhaps You Notice How The Denial Is So Often The Preface To The Justification.
Denial
Justification
I Don’t Have A Body, I Am A Body.
Body
In Our Native Terms, The Ironic Style Is Often Compounded With The Sardonic And The Hard-boiled; Even The Effortlessly Superior. But Irony Originates In The Glance And The Shrug Of The Loser, The Outsider, The Despised Minority. It Is A Nuance That Comes Most Effortlessly To The Oppressed.
Sunset
Ironic
Style
You Should Be Nicer To Him,' A Schoolmate Had Once Said To Me Of Some Awfully Ill-favored Boy. 'he Has No Friends.' This, I Realized With A Pang Of Pity That I Can Still Remember, Was Only True As Long As Everybody Agreed To It.
Bullying
Boys
Long
What I Used To Say To People, When I Was Much More Engagé Myself, Is That You Can't Be Apolitical. It Will Come And Get You. It's Not That You Shouldn't Be Neutral. It's That You Won't Be Able To Stay Neutral.
People
Able
Used
If You Gave [jerry] Falwell An Enema He Could Be Buried In A Matchbox.
Atheist
Religion
Buried
Demands That You Believe The Impossible Do Not Lead To Peaceful Outcomes.
Believe
Peaceful
Demand
In The Aftermath Of The Recent Wave Action In The Indian Ocean, Even The Archbishop Of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], Proved Himself A Latter-day Voltairean By Whimpering That He Could See How This Might Shake Belief In A Friendly Creator. Williamson Is Of Course A Notorious Fool, Who Does An Almost Perfect Imitation Of A Bleating And Frightened Sheep, But Even So, One Is Forced To Rub One's Eyes In Astonishment. Is It Possible That A Grown Man Could Live So Long And Still Have His Personal Composure, Not To Mention His Lifetime Job Description, Upset By A Large Ripple Of Seawater?
Atheist
Jobs
Ocean
For The People Who Ostensibly Wish Me Well Or Are Worried About My Immortal Soul, I Say I Take It Kindly.
People
Soul
Wish
I'd Like To Prove To Other People That It's Not The End Of Everything To Be Diagnosed With Cancer.
Cancer
People
Ends
A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory.
Memories
Liars
Good Memories
I Personally Want To "do" Death In The Active And Not The Passive, And To Be There To Look It In The Eye And Be Doing Something When It Comes For Me.
Death
Eye
Looks
I Wrote A Piece From North Korea Called Visit To A Small Planet Which Is A Line I Stole From A Play Of Gore Vidal's, Because It Did Seem To Me As If I Had Left This Planet Completely To Go On This Visit To The Northern Part Of The Korean Peninsula, And It Was As If Coming Back From Another Spatial Body Altogether.
Korea
Play
Pieces
Even With All The Advantages Of Retrospect, And A Lot Of Witnesses Dead And Gone, You Can't Make Your Life Look As If You Intended It Or You Were Consistent. All You Can Show Is How You Dealt With Various Hands.
Hands
Looks
Gone
It's No Fun To Appreciate To The Full The Truth Of The Materialist Proposition That I Don't Have A Body, I Am A Body.
Fun
Appreciate
Body
If We Have Free Will, By Definition We Cannot Be Granted It. We Can't Be Given It. My [-audio-recording-distorted-] Paradox States That 'of Course We Have Free Will, We Have No Choice.' To Say That It's A Gift Is To Negate The Whole Concept Of Free Will On Its Face. So, If That Isn't Self-evident, I Can't Think Of Anything That Would Meet The Definition Of Being Self-evident.
Thinking
Self
Choices
I Do Not Believe Any Of The Statistical Claims That Are Made About Public Opinion. I Don't See Why Anybody Does.
Believe
Public Opinion
Doe
Religion Is Poison Because It Asks Us To Give Up Our Most Precious Faculty, Which Is That Of Reason, And To Believe Things Without Evidence. It Then Asks Us To Respect This, Which It Calls Faith.
Giving Up
Believe
Religion
Rosa Luxemburg Was - Still Is For Me - A Great Personal And Intellectual Heroine. Her Analysis Of Leninism And Capitalism And Social Democracy Are All Worth Reading. I Wouldn't Consider Anyone Truly Politically Literate If They Hadn't Given Her Work At Least Some Study.
Reading
Intellectual
Democracy
There Is An Unusually High And Consistent Correlation Between The Stupidity Of A Given Person And That Person’s Propensity To Be Impressed By The Measurement Of Iq.
Stupidity
Measurement
Given
A Sure Sign Of Ineptitude And Malice Is Manifested When One's Attacker Is Willing To Cover Himself With Mud In Order To Try And Make Some Of It Adhere To His Target.
Order
Trying
Target
Beautiful Sentences Pop Into My Head. Beautiful Sentences That Aren't Always Absolutely Accurate. Then, I Have To Choose Between The Beautiful Sentence And Being Absolutely Accurate. It Can Be A Difficult Choice.
Beautiful
Difficult Choices
Pops
It's Often A Bad Sign When People Defend Themselves Against Charges Which Haven't Been Made.
People
Made
Havens
I, For One, Will Not Have [the Vietcong] Insulted By Any Comparison To The Forces Of Zarqawi, The Fedayeen Saddam, And The Criminal Underworld Now Arrayed Against Us. These Depraved Elements Are The Iraqi Khmer Rouge.
Criminals
Elements
Force
Cancer Victimhood Contains A Permanent Temptation To Be Self-centred And Even Solipsistic.
Cancer
Self
Temptation
I Had Real Plans For My Next Decade And Felt I'd Worked Hard Enough To Earn It. Will I Really Not Live To See My Children Married? To Watch The World Trade Center Rise Again? To Read - If Not Indeed Write - The Obituaries Of Elderly Villains Like Henry Kissinger And Joseph Ratzinger?
Children
Real
Writing
Mockery Of Religion Is One Of The Most Essential Things... One Of The Beginnings Of Human Emancipation Is The Ability To Laugh At Authority.
Laughing
Religion
Essentials
I Used To Wish There Was A Useful Term For Those Of Us Who Thought American Power Should Be Used To Remove Psychopathic Dictators.
Wish
Dictator
Used
Well, To The People Who Pray For Me To Not Only Have An Agonising Death, But Then Be Reborn To Have An Agonising And Horrible Eternal Life Of Torture, I Say, 'well, Good On You. See You There.'
People
Praying
Torture
Nothing Could Make Me Forget What The Reagan Years Had Actually Been Like.
Years
Forget
The Museums Of Medieval Europe, From Holland To Tuscany, Are Crammed With Instruments And Devices Upon Which The Holy Men Labored Devoutly, In Order To See How Long They Could Keep Someone Alive While Being Roasted. It Is Not Needful To Go Into Further Details, But There Were Also Religious Books Of Instruction In This Art, And Guides For The Detection Of Heresy By Pain.
Religious
Art
Pain
I Don't Say Things Like "the Grace Of God." All That's White Noise To Me, Not Because I'm An Intellectual. For Many People, It's Gibberish. Likewise, The Idea That The Koran Was Dictated By An Archaic Illiterate Is A Fantasy.
Ideas
White
People
What Is Your Idea Of Earthly Happiness? To Be Vindicated In My Own Lifetime.
Ideas
Lifetime
My Own
It [obama's Nobel Peace Prize] Would Be Like Giving Someone An Oscar In The Hope That It Would Encourage Them To Make A Decent Motion Picture.
Giving
Would Be
Oscars
I've Had Some Dark Nights Of The Soul, Of Course, But Giving In To Depression Would Be A Sellout, A Defeat.
Dark
Night
Giving
What Word Or Expression Do You Most Overuse? Re-reading A Collection Of My Stuff, I Was Rather Startled To Find That It Was 'perhaps.
Reading
Expression
Stuff
What They [the 9/11 Attackers] Abominate About 'the West', To Put It In A Phrase, Is Not What Western Liberals Don't Like And Can't Defend About Their Own System, But What They Do Like About It And Must Defend: Its Emancipated Women, Its Scientific Inquiry, Its Separation Of Religion From The State.
Phrases
West
Inquiry
My Chief Consolation In This Year Of Living Dyingly Has Been The Presence Of Friends.
Years
Chiefs
Consolation
I Don't Think Souls Or Bodies Can Be Changed By Incantation. Or Anything Else By The Way.
Thinking
Soul
Body
The Human Wish To Credit Good Things As Miraculous And To Charge Bad Things To Another Account Is Apparently Universal.
Wish
Credit
Good Things
A Bit Of A Stomach Give A Chap A Position In Society.
Giving
Stomach
Chaps
The Role Of Dissident Is Not, And Should Not Be, A Claim Of Membership In A Communion Of Saints. In Other Words, The More Fallible The Mammal, The Truer The Example.
Democracy
Saint
Roles
Billy Graham Is A Boring, Racist Charlatan.
Religion
Racist
Boring
Religion Of Every Kind Involves The Promise That The Misery And Futility Of Existence Can Be Overcome Or Even Transfigured. One Might Suppose That The Possession Of Such A Magnificent Formula, Combined With The Tremendous Assurance Of A Benevolent God, Would Make A Person Happy. But Such Appears Not To Be The Case.: Unease And Insecurity And Rage Seem To Keep Up With Blissful Certainty, And Even To Outpace It.
Insecurity
Promise
Overcoming
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People
Atheism
Groups
If Religious Instruction Were Not Allowed Until The Child Had Attained The Age Of Reason, We Would Be Living In A Quite Different World.
Religious
Children
Religion
A Celebrity Is Well Known For Being Well Known. I'm Relatively Well Known - But For What I've Written And Said, Or So I Fondly Imagine.
Imagine
Well Known
Said
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
People
Interesting
Religion
Totalitarian Is A Cliché, Dictatorship Is Based On Clichéd Thinking, On Very Tried And Tested Uniform Stuff. They Don't Mind That They're Boring, They Don't Mind That They're Obvious, Their Point Is Made.
Thinking
Mind
Stuff
Trust Is Not The Same As Faith. A Friend Is Someone You Trust. Putting Faith In Anyone Is A Mistake.
Faith
Mistake
The Governor Of Texas, Who, When Asked If The Bible Should Also Be Taught In Spanish, Replied That 'if English Was Good Enough For Jesus, Then It's Good Enough For Me.
Jesus
Texas
Taught
If You Want To Stay In For The Long Haul, And Lead A Life That Is Free From Illusions Either Propagated By You Or Embraced By You, Then I Suggest You Learn To Recognize And Avoid The Symptoms Of The Zealot And The Person Who Knows He Is Right. For The Dissenter, The Skeptical Mentality Is At Least As Important As Any Armor Of Principle.
Long
Important
Principles
I'm A Member Of No Party. I Have No Ideology. I'm A Rationalist. I Do What I Can In The International Struggle Between Science And Reason And The Barbarism, Superstition And Stupidity That's All Around Us.
Party
Struggle
Stupidity
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Religious
Views
People
My Children, To The Extent That They Have Found Religion, Have Found It From Me, In That I Insist On At Least A Modicum Of Religious Education For Them.
Religious
Children
Found
The Taming And Domestication Of Religion Is One Of The Unceasing Chores Of Civilization.
Civilization
Taming
Chores
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.
Dull
Problem
Boring
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Careers
Culture
Citizens
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Government
Self
Way
The Creation Story Is Ridiculous Garbage. And Has Given Us A Completely False Picture Of Our Origin As A Species And The Origins Of The Cosmos. If You Want A Good Mythical Story It Would Be The Life Of Socrates.
Garbage
Would Be
Cosmos
My Own Opinion Is Enough For Me. And I Claim The Right To Defend It Against Any Consensus, Any Majority Anywhere, Any Place, Any Time. And Anyone Who Disagrees With This Can Pick A Number, Get In Line And Kiss My Ass.
Kissing
Numbers
Lines
Where Would You Like To Live? In A State Of Conflict Or A Conflicted State?
Conflict
States
I Sympathize Afresh With The Mighty Voltaire Who, When Badgered On His Deathbed And Urged To Renounce The Devil, Murmured That This Was No Time To Be Making Enemies.
Enemy
Devil
Renounce
America Was Not Interventionist Enough, Which, Of Course, Did Mean A Bit Of A Breach With Old Comrades On The Left. I Felt The International Left In The Countries Concerned Took The Same Position As I Did. So, In My View, It's The Left That's Become Reactionary And Isolationist And Parochial.
Country
Mean
Views
One Can't Live Without Fear, It's A Question Of What Is Your Attitude Towards Fear? I'm Afraid Of A Sordid Death. I'm Afraid That I Will Die In An Ugly Or Squalid Way, And Cancer Can Be Very Vigorous In That Respect.
Attitude
Cancer
Ugly
My Father Had Died, And Very Swiftly, Too, Of Cancer Of The Esophagus. He Was 79. I Am 61. In Whatever Kind Of A 'race' Life May Be, I Have Very Abruptly Become A Finalist.
Cancer
Father
Race
Indeed, It's Futile To Try And Use Holy Scripture To Support Any Political Position. I Deeply Distrust Anyone Who Does. Just Look At What An Islamic Republic Is Like.
Atheist
Islamic
Support
In A Pyongyang Restaurant, Don't Ever Ask For A Doggie Bag.
Bags
Restaurants
Asks
Evolution Is, As Well As Smarter Than We Are, Infinitely More Callous And Cruel, And Also Capricious.
Evolution
Capricious
Callous
High Moral Character Is Not A Precondition For Great Moral Accomplishments.
Character
Accomplishment
Moral
The Pornography Of Tough-mindedness, Covert Action, And Preparedness For "peace Through Strength" Has Had A Predictably Hypnotic Effect On The Legislative Branch, Turning It From Legal Watchdog To Lapdog.
Branches
Action
Tough
Though It Is True We Are The Highest And Smartest Animals, Ospreys Have Eyes We Have Calculated To Be Sixty Times More Powerful And Sophisticated Than Our Own And That Blindness, Often Caused By Microscopic Parasites That Are Themselves Miracles Of Ingenuity, Is One Of The Oldest And Most Tragic Disorders Known To Man. And Why Award The Superior Eye (or In The Case Of Cat Or Bat, Also The Ear) To The Inferior Species.
Powerful
Cat
Eye
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.
Country
Taken
Order
Reagan Is Doing To The Country What He Can No Longer Do To His Wife.
Country
Wife
I Think Religion Should Be Treated With Ridicule, Hatred And Contempt, And I Claim That Right.
Thinking
Hatred
Claims
Religion Makes Intelligent People Say And Do Wacky Things, Believe And Affirm Crazy Things.
Crazy
Believe
Intelligent
Not Many People Come Through Esophageal Cancer And Live To Talk About It, Or Not For Long.
Cancer
Long
People
As The Many Male Victims Of Rape In The Regime's Disgusting Jails Can Testify, This State-run Pathology Of Sexual Repression And Sexual Sadism Is Not Content To Degrade Women Only.
Running
Jail
Sadism
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.
Winning
Forever
Battle
I'm A Single-issue Voter, To Get Straight To The Point. I'm Really Only Interested In The Candidate Who's Toughest And Least Apologetic When It Comes To The Confrontation With Islamic Jihadism.
Islamic
Issues
Voters
A Point, Like A Joke, Is A Terrible Thing To Miss.
Missing
Terrible
Terrible Things
American Author Mark Twain, While Viewed As Liberal And Non-judgmental, Did At Times Demonstrate Both These Characteristics. While His Reasons For Detesting The Christian Faith Are Unclear, They Seem To Have Been Profound And Deep-rooted. Having Lambasted The Founder Of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, In A Later Quote He Referred To The Book Of Mormon As "chloroform In Print."
Christian
Book
Profound
Kissinger Projects A Strong Impression Of A Man At Home In The World And On Top Of His Brief. But There Are A Number Of Occasions When It Suits Him To Pose As A Sort Of Candide: Naive, And Ill-prepared For And Easily Unhorsed By Events. No Doubt This Pose Costs Him Something In Point Of Self-esteem. It Is A Pose, Furthermore, Which He Often Adopts At Precisely The Time When The Record Shows Him To Be Knowledgeable, And When Knowledge Or Foreknowledge Would Also Confront Him With Charges Of Responsibility Or Complicity.
Strong
Self Esteem
Responsibility
My Own View Is That This Planet Is Used As A Penal Colony, Lunatic Asylum And Dumping Ground By A Superior Civilisation, To Get Rid Of The Undesirable And Unfit. I Can't Prove It, But You Can't Disprove It Either.
Views
Lunatic Asylums
Planets
It's Normally Agreed That The Question 'how Are You?' Doesn't Put You On Your Oath To Give A Full Or Honest Answer.
Giving
Answers
Honest
I Vote And I Do Jury Duty.
Vote
Duty
Jury Duty
Ruthless And Arrogant Though Power Can Appear, It Is Only Ever Held By Mere Mammals Who Excrete And Yearn, And Who Suffer From Insomnia And Insecurity. These Mammals Are Also Necessarily Vain In The ­extreme, And Often Wish To Be Liked Almost As Much As They Desire To Be Feared.
Power
Insomnia
Insecurity
The God Of Moses Would Call For Other Tribes, Including His Favorite One, To Suffer Massacre And Plague And Even Extirpation, But When The Grave Closed Over His Victims He Was Essentially Finished With Them Unless He Remembered To Curse Their Succeeding Progeny. Not Until The Advent Of The Prince Of Peace Do We Hear Of The Ghastly Idea Of Further Punishing And Torturing The Dead.
Ideas
Suffering
Prince Of Peace
What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Be Dismissed Without Evidence.
Inspirational
Wisdom
Atheist
In Order To Terminate A Pregnancy, You Have To Still A Heartbeat, Switch Off A Developing Brain.
Pregnancy
Order
Abortion
If You Say "the Economy," You Show You're Stupid. There's No Such Thing As The Economy. There Is Not A Unity Between The Forces Of Production And The Relations Of Production.
Stupid
Unity
Economy
I Have No Time To Waste On This Planet Being Told What To Do By Those Who Think That God Has Given Them Instructions.
Thinking
Waste
Planets
If Asked My Opinion About Virginity, I Would Say, "i'm Opposed To It." I Don't Think It Deserves To Be Celebrated, At Any Rate. Or At Least, If I'm Not Opposed, I'm Very Highly Skeptical And Critical Of It.
Thinking
Opinion
Rate
The Obsession With Gold, Actually And Politically, Occurs Among Those Who Regard Economics As A Branch Of Morality. Gold Is Solid, Gold Is Durable, Gold Is Rare, Gold Is Even (in Certain Very Peculiar Circumstances) Convertible. To Believe In Thrift, Solidity And Soundness Is To Believe In Some Way In The Properties Of Gold.
Money
Believe
Gold
The Teachings Of Christianity - From Vicarious Redemption To The Love Of Enemies, No Thought For The Morrow Need Be Taken, That No Thrift Or Care Or Family Or Society Or Solidarity Is Necessary - These Are Immoral Teachings That Have Done And Continue To Inflict Untold Moral And Physical Harm On Our Species. And Until We Outgrow This Nonsense, We Have No Chance Of Emancipating Ourselves.
Teaching
Taken
Enemy
The Amazing Fact Is That America Is Founded On A Document. It's A Work In Progress. It Can Be Tested By Each Generation.
America
Progress
Generations
Faith Is The Surrender Of The Mind; It's The Surrender Of Reason, It's The Surrender Of The Only Thing That Makes Us Different From Other Mammals. It's Our Need To Believe, And To Surrender Our Skepticism And Our Reason, Our Yearning To Discard That And Put All Our Trust Or Faith In Someone Or Something, That Is The Sinister Thing To Me. Of All The Supposed Virtues, Faith Must Be The Most Overrated.
Atheist
Believe
Animal
What Is It You Most Dislike? Stupidity, Especially In Its Nastiest Forms Of Racism And Superstition.
Atheist
Stupid
Racism
Exceptional Claims, Require Exceptional Evidence.
Claims
Evidence
Exceptional
I Must Have Been One Of The Least Surprised People On Earth On September 11. I Felt Very Braced For That. I Knew Something Like That Was Going To Come.
People
September 11
Earth
(howard) Dean Is A Raving Nut Bag...a Raving, Sinister, Demagogic Nutbag...i And A Few Other People Saw That He Should Be Destroyed.
Nuts
People
Bags
Very Often The Test Of One's Allegiance To A Cause Or To A People Is Precisely The Willingness To Stay The Course When Things Are Boring, To Run The Risk Of Repeating An Old Argument Just One More Time, Or Of Going One More Round With A Hostile Or (much Worse) Indifferent Audience.
Running
People
Risk
Avoid Stock Expressions (like The Plague, As William Safire Used To Say) And Repetitions. Don't Say That As A Boy Your Grandmother Used To Read To You, Unless At That Stage Of Her Life She Really Was A Boy, In Which Case You Have Probably Thrown Away A Better Intro. If Something Is Worth Hearing Or Listening To, It's Very Probably Worth Reading. So, This Above All: Find Your Own Voice.
Reading
Grandmother
Boys
The Struggle For A Free Intelligence Has Always Been A Struggle Between The Ironic And The Literal Mind.
Struggle
Ironic
Mind
In Some Ways I Feel Sorry For Racists And For Religious Fanatics, Because They So Much Miss The Point Of Being Human, And Deserve A Sort Of Pity. But Then I Harden My Heart, And Decide To Hate Them All The More, Because Of The Misery They Inflict And Because Of The Contemptible Excuses They Advance For Doing So.
Religious
Sorry
Hate
The Politicized Sponsors Of This Pseudoscientific Nonsense Should Be Ashamed To Live, Let Alone Die. If You Want To Take Part In The “war” Against Cancer, And Other Terrible Maladies, Too, Then Join The Battle Against Their Lethal Stupidity.
War
Cancer
Stupidity
Those Who Want To Be Offended Don't Have The Right To Try And Close Down The Newspaper That Offends Them.
Trying
Want
Newspapers
The Discovery There Is No God Is A Great Relief, Because If There Were, It Would Be Like Living In A Celestial North Korea If There Was One. You Would Never Be Able To Escape.
Discovery
Korea
Religion
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.
Children
Knowing
Expectations
Urging Humans To Be Superhumans, On Pain Of Death And Torture, Is The Urging Of Terrible Self-abasement At Their Repeated And Inevitable Failure To Keep The Rules.
Atheist
Pain
Self
In The Ordinary Moral Universe, The Good Will Do The Best They Can, The Worst Will Do The Worst They Can, But If You Want To Make Good People Do Wicked Things, You’ll Need Religion.
People
Religion
Wicked
The Noble Title Of "dissident" Must Be Earned Rather Than Claimed; It Connotes Sacrifice And Risk Rather Than Mere Disagreement.
Sacrifice
Risk
Titles
Hannah Arendt In Her Study Of Totalitarianism Borrowed From Immanuel Kant The Concept Of Radical Evil, Of Evil That's So Evil That In The End It Destroys Itself, It's So Committed To Evil And It's So Committed To Hatred And Cruelty That It Becomes Suicidal. My Definition Of It Is The Surplus Value That's Generated By Totalitarianism. It Means You Do More Violence, More Cruelty Than You Absolutely Have To To Stay In Power.
Suicidal
Mean
Evil
We Inherited These Principles And These Freedoms And We Here Highly Resolve That We Shall Pass Them On, As We Will Pass On An Undivided Republic Purged Of Racism And Slavery, To Our Descendants. The Popgun Discharges Of A Few Pathetic Sectarians And Crackpot Revisionists Are Negligible, And Will Be Drowned By The Mounting Chorus That Demands: 'mr Jefferson! Build Up That Wall'.
Atheist
Wall
Racism
A Good Day Is One Where I Can Not Just Read A Book, But Write A Review Of It. Maybe Today I'll Be Able To Do That. I Get For Some Reason Somewhat Stronger When The Sun Starts To Go Down. Dusk Is A Good Time For Me. I'm Crepuscular.
Book
Writing
Good Day
If The Qur'an Was The Word Of God, It Had Been Dictated On A Very Bad Day.
Bad Day
Islam
Word Of God
Well, I'll Put It This Way: You Can Certainly Say Belief In God Makes People Behave Worse. That Can Be Proved Beyond A Doubt.
People
Doubt
Way
It's [los Angeles] Mostly Full Of Nonsense And Delusion And Egomania. They Think They'll Be Young And Beautiful Forever, Even Though Most Of Them Aren't Even Young And Beautiful Now.
Beautiful
Thinking
Forever
I'm Here As A Product Of Process Of Evolution, Which Doesn't Make Very Many Exceptions. And Which Rates Life Relatively Cheaply.
Evolution
Process
Rate
I Think The Cultural Task Is To Separate Our Impulses And Needs And Desires From The Supernatural And, Above All, From The Superstitious.
Thinking
Desire
Tasks
I Think The Materialist Conception Of History Is Valid.
Thinking
Conception
To Reflect Upon The Event Horizon Is A Great Deal More Awe-inspiring Than A Burning Bush Or A Wooden Statue That Weeps Or Pees Or Bleeds.
Religion
Events
Horizon
Knowing That We Are Primates, I Think, Is A Fascinating Discovery, And A Very Interesting And Rather Cheering One.
Cheer
Thinking
Discovery
Morality Comes From Humanism And Is Stolen By Religion For Its Own Purposes.
Purpose
Morality
Stolen
I'm Very Happy By Myself - I'm Lucky In That Way - If I've Got Enough To Read And Something To Write About And A Bit Of Alcohol For Me To Add An Edge, Not To Dull It.
Writing
Alcohol
Lucky
As The Cleansing Ocean Closes Over Bin Laden's Carcass, May The Earth Lie Lightly On The Countless Graves Of Those He Sentenced Without Compunction To Be Burned Alive Or Dismembered In The Street.
Lying
Ocean
Alive
Virtue And Merit Can Become Their Opposites If They Are Exacted Or Compelled.
Opposites
Merit
Virtue
I'm An Atheist. I'm Not Neutral About Religion, I'm Hostile To It. I Think It Is A Positively Bad Idea, Not Just A False One. And I Mean Not Just Organized Religion, But Religious Belief Itself.
Religious
Atheist
Mean
I Can Never Quite Decide Whether The Anti-columbus Movement Is Merely Risible Or Faintly Sinister. It Is Sinister, Though, Because It Is An Ignorant Celebration Of Stasis And Backwardness, With An Unpleasant Tinge Of Self-hatred.
Self
Hatred
Ignorant
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.
Thinking
Views
Political
The Atheist Proposition Is The Following - Most Of The Time - It May Not Be Said That There Is No God; It May Be Said That There Is No Reason To Think That There Is One.
Atheist
Thinking
May
Bertrand Russell Used To Employ The Method Of "evidence Against Interest"; In Other Words Of Deciding That A Critique Of Capital Punishment, Say, Carried More Weight If It Came From A Prison Governor. (my Friend John O'sullivan Puts It Like This: If The Pope Says He Believes In God, He's Only Doing His Job; If He Says He Doesn't Believe In God, He May Be On To Something.)
Jobs
Believe
Punishment
A Life That Partakes Even A Little Of Friendship, Love, Irony, Humor, Parenthood, Literature, And Music, And The Chance To Take Part In Battles For The Liberation Of Others Cannot Be Called 'meaningless'.
Battle
Friendship Love
Literature
Many More People Are Poor And Sick Because Of The Life Of Mt: Even More Will Be Poor And Sick If Her Example Is Followed. She Was A Fanatic, A Fundamentalist, And A Fraud, And A Church That Officially Protects Those Who Violate The Innocent Has Given Us Another Clear Sign Of Where It Truly Stands On Moral And Ethical Questions.
Ethical Questions
People
Sick
The Death Toll Is Not Nearly High Enough... Too Many [jihadists] Have Escaped.
Tolls
Enough
I Love It When Muslims Go To War With Each Other, As I Do When The Christians Do, Because It Shows There's No Such Thing As The Christian World And The Islamic World. That's All Crap.
Christian
War
Islamic
I Have Decided To Take Whatever My Disease Can Throw At Me.
Disease
Decided
Islamophobia: A Word Created By Fascists, And Used By Cowards, To Manipulate Morons.
Coward
Used
Fascists
To 'choose' Dogma And Faith Over Doubt And Experience Is To Throw Out The Ripening Vintage And To Reach Greedily For The Kool-aid.
Atheist
Vintage
Doubt
If I Was Told To Sacrifice Something To Prove My Devotion To God, If I Was Told To Do What All Monotheists Are Told To Do And Admire The Man Who Said 'yes I'll Gut My Kid To Show My Love Of God.'
Kids
Sacrifice
Men
I Can’t Hope To Convey The Full Effect Of The Embraces And Avowals, But I Can Perhaps Offer A Crumb Of Counsel. If There Is Anybody Known To You Who Might Benefit From A Letter Or A Visit, Do Not On Any Account Postpone The Writing Or The Making Of It. The Difference Made Will Almost Certainly Be More Than You Have Calculated
Writing
Differences
Benefits
All Of Life Is A Wager
Wagers
Life Is
I Became A Journalist Because I Didn't Want To Have To Rely On The Press For Information... I Only Read It To Make Sure Of Whatever Everyone Else Thinks Is Going On, Because It's Useful To Know What People Think Is The News.
Thinking
People
News
One Of The Many Dreadful Aspects Of The Kennedy 'legacy' Is The Now-unbreakable Grip Of Celebrity Politics, Image-doctoring, Stage Management, And "torch-passing" Rhetoric In General.
History
Torches
Legacy
By Trying To Adjust To The Findings That It Once Tried So Viciously To Ban And Repress, Religion Has Only Succeeded In Restating The Same Questions That Undermined It In Earlier Epochs. What Kind Of Designer Or Creator Is So Wasteful And Capricious And Approximate? What Kind Of Designer Or Creator Is So Cruel And Indifferent? And - Most Of All - What Kind Of Designer Or Creator Only Chooses To "reveal" Himself To Semi-stupefied Peasants In Desert Regions?
Trying
Desert
Kind
We Know How To Think. We Know How To Laugh. We Know We're Going To Die, Which Gives Us A Lot To Think About, And We Have A Need For, What I Would Call, "the Transcendent" Or "the Numinous" Or Even "the Ecstatic" That Comes Out In Love And Music, Poetry, And Landscape. I Wouldn't Trust Anyone Who Didn't Respond To Things Of That Sort.
Thinking
Giving
Laughing
I've Noticed That The More Flooding There Is, The More Bullshit Gets Talked. I Mean It Was Very Noticeable In The Asian Tsumai. It Happened Around Christmas-new Year. The Muslims Of Sri Lanka Said 'we Knew This Would Happen Because The Christians Were Using Alcohol For Their Christmas Celebrations.' The Buddhists Said 'we Knew This Would Happen Because Of The Horrible Muslim Slaughter Practices.' It's Amazing To See How Apocalypse Or Catastrophe Makes People Behave Primitively.
Christian
New Year
Buddhist
Since I Speak And Write About This A Good Deal, I Am Often Asked At Public Meetings, In What Sometimes Seems To Me A Rather Prurient Way, Whether I Myself Or My Family Have 'ever Been Threatened' By Jihadists. My Answer Is That Yes, I Have, And So Has Everyone Else In The Audience, If They Have Paid Enough Attention To The Relevant Bin-ladenist Broadcasts To Notice The Fact.
Writing
Facts
Attention
Those Of Us Who Write And Study History Are Accustomed To Its Approximations And Ambiguities. This Is Why We Do Not Take Literally The Tenth-hand Reports Of Frightened And Illiterate Peasants Who Claim To Have Seen Miracles Or To Have Had Encounters With Messiahs And Prophets And Redeemers Who Were, Like Them, Mere Humans. And This Is Also Why We Will Never Submit To Dictation From Those Who Display A Fanatical Belief In Certainty And Revelation.
Atheist
Writing
Hands
A Wide And Vague Impression Exists That So-called Eastern Religion Is More Contemplative, Innocuous, And Humane Than The Proselytizing Monotheisms Of The West. Don't Believe A Word Of This: Try Asking The Children Of Indochina Who Were Dumped By Their Parents For Inherited Deformities That Were Attributed To Sins In A Previous 'life.
Atheist
Children
Believe
The Reading Public Isn't Born That Doesn't Think Foreigners Are Either Funny Or Faintly Sinister.
Reading
Thinking
Born
The Postmodernists' Tyranny Wears People Down By Boredom And Semi-literate Prose.
People
Boredom
Tyranny
The Penalty For Getting Mugged In An American City And Losing Your Id Is That You Can't Fly Home.
Home
Cities
Losing
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.
Soul
Generations
Firsts
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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