Evelyn Waugh Was In Error When He Said That In New York There Was A Neurosis In The Air Which The Inhabitants Mistook For Energy. There Was, Rather, A Tensile Excitement In The Air Which Made One Think - Made Me Think For Many Years - That Time Spent Asleep In New York Was Somehow Time Wasted. Whether This Thought Has Lengthened Or Shortened My Life I Shall Never Know, But It Has Certainly Colored It.

-Christopher Hitchens

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Evelyn Waugh Was In

Christopher Hitchens

Topic

New York

Thinking

Air

More From Christopher Hitchens

I Don't Even Like Showing My Stuff To Publishers And Editors Much.

Editors

Stuff

Publishers

The Brilliant Schiller Was Wrong In His Joan Of Arc When He Said Against Stupidity The Gods Themselves Contend In Vain. It Is Actually By Means Of The Gods That We Make Our Stupidity And Gullibility Into Something Ineffable.

Mean

Stupidity

Brilliant

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

David Irving Is Not Just A Fascist Historian. He Is Also A Great Historian Of Fascism.

Fascists

Fascism

Historian

Skepticism Rather Than Credulity Is The Highest Principle That The Human Intellect Can Use To Ennoble Our Existence.

Religion

Use

Principles

Cheap Booze Is A False Economy.

Alcohol

Economy

Booze

Which Natural Gift Would You Most Like To Possess? The Ability To Master Other Languages (which Would Have Hugely Enhanced The Scope Of These Answers). How Would You Like To Die? Fully Conscious, And Either Fighting Or Reciting (or Fooling Around). What Do You Most Dislike About Your Appearance? The Way In Which It Makes Former Admirers Search For Neutral Words.

Fighting

Answers

Way

Billy Graham Is A Boring, Racist Charlatan.

Religion

Racist

Boring

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.

Stars

War

Technology

[concerning Monotheistic Religions] The Only Thing These Hysterical Cults Have In Common Is The Belief That This World Will Be Consumed, And Deservedly So, When The Moment Is Ripe. They Also, All Of Them, Profess A Great Disdain For Earthly Possessions. Yet They Pass The Intervening Time In Haggling Over The Most Trivial And Paltry Property Rights, Over Caves And Rocks And Disputable Pieces Of Archeological Rubbish.

Rights

Rocks

Caves

Mockery Of Religion Is One Of The Most Essential Things Because To Demystify Supposedly 'holy Text Dictated By God' And Show That They Are Man Made And What You Have To Show [is] There Internal Inconsistencies And Absurdities. One Of The Beginnings Of Human Emancipation Is The Ability To Laugh At Authority... It Is An Indispensable Thing People Can Call It Blasphemy If They Like, But If They Call It That They Have To Assume There Is Something To Be Blasphemed - Some Divine Work, Well I Don't Accept The Premise.

Atheist

Men

Laughing

The People Who Must Never Have Power Are The Humorless. To Impossible Certainties Of Rectitude They Ally Tedium And Uniformity

People

Allies

Impossible

The Essence Of Tyranny Is Not Iron Law. It Is Capricious Law.

Iron

Law

Essence

Not Many People Come Through Esophageal Cancer And Live To Talk About It, Or Not For Long.

Cancer

Long

People

The Bible May, Indeed Does, Contain A Warrant For Trafficking In Humans, For Ethnic Cleansing, For Slavery, For Bride-price, And For Indiscriminate Massacre, But We Are Not Bound By Any Of It Because It Was Put Together By Crude, Uncultured Human Mammals.

Motivational

Atheist

Religion

There Is A Division Within The Neo-conservative Movement, Which Is, By The Way, One Of The Tests Of Its Authenticity As A Tendency. I Would Say I Was A Supporter Of Paul Wolfowitz.

Division

Movement

Tests

What Happens To The Faith Healer And The Shaman When Any Poor Citizen Can See The Full Effect Of Drugs Or Surgeries, Administered Without Ceremonies Or Mystifications? Roughly The Same Thing As Happens To The Rainmaker When The Climatologist Turns Up, Or To The Diviner From The Heavens When Schoolteachers Get Hold Of Elementary Telescopes.

Heaven

Drug

Citizens

Religion Comes From The Period Of Human Prehistory Where Nobody - Not Even The Mighty Democritus Who Concluded That All Matter Was Made From Atoms - Had The Smallest Idea Of What Was Going On. It Comes From The Bawling And Fearful Infancy Of Our Species, And Is A Babyish Attempt To Meet Our Inescapable Demand For Knowledge. Today The Least Educated Of My Children Knows Much More About The Natural Order Than Any Of The Founders Of Religion.

Children

Order

Ideas

An Old Joke Has An Oxford Professor Meeting An American Former Graduate Student And Asking Him What He's Working On These Days. 'my Thesis Is On The Survival Of The Class System In The United States.' 'oh Really, That's Interesting: One Didn't Think There Was A Class System In The United States.' 'nobody Does. That's How It Survives.

Thinking

Class

Oxford

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

Party

Thinking

There Are Two Clocks Ticking In Iran. One Is The Democracy Movement Clock Which Is Ticking Now Faster Than It Was But It's Got A Lot Of Catching Up To Do. And Then There's The Clock That's Ticking Towards A Nuclear Weaponry.

Iran

Two

Democracy

Of Course, I Do Everything For Money.

Courses

For Most Of My Life I Let Women Do The Driving And Was Happy To Let Them.

Driving

I Am A Person Of Faith: I Am A Person Who Will Believe Practically Anything On No Evidence At All.

Believe

Evidence

Persons

I'm Not That Keen On The Idea Of Being Unconscious.

Ideas

Unconscious

I'm Not Particularly A Feminist, But If You Get Women Off The Animal Cycle Of Reproduction And Give Them Some Say In How Many Children They'll Have, Immediately The Floor Will Rise.

Children

Animal

Giving

I've Been Writing A Lot About A New Form Of Russian Imperialism. Actually, Russian Orthodox Imperialism. It's Very Little Remarked That The Cement, The Political, Ideological Cement Of The Russian Regime Now, Communism Having Collapsed And Imploded, Is Increasingly A Confessional One.

Writing

Political

Littles

There Is No Such Thing As Closure, And It Wouldn't Be Worth Having If It Were Available, Because All It Would Mean Is That Something That Was Quite An Important Part Of You Had Gone Numb.

Mean

Important

Gone

One Of The Reasons I Decided To Apply For American Citizenship After Something Like A Quarter Of Century Of Living Here On A British, European Union Passport And A Green Card, Was My Identification With The United States In The Post-september 11th Period.

United States

Cards

Unions

There's No Hell Mentioned In The Old Testament. The Punishment Of The Dead Is Not Specified There. It's Only With Gentle Jesus, Meek And Mild, That The Idea Of Eternal Torture For Minor Transgressions Is Introduced.

Jesus

Punishment

Ideas

Teasing Is Very Often A Sign Of Inner Misery.

Misery

Tease

Thanks To The Telescope And The Microscope, Religion No Longer Offers An Explanation For Anything Important.

Religion

Atheism

Important

Millions Of People Die Every Day. Everyone's Got To Go Sometime. I've Came By This Particular Tumor Honestly. If You Smoke, Which I Did For Many Years Very Heavily With Occasional Interruption, And If You Use Alcohol, You Make Yourself A Candidate For It In Your Sixties.

Years

People

Alcohol

Human Society Is Inconceivable Unless Words Are To Some Extent Bonds.

Humans

Human Society

When You Consider How Many Millions Of Workdays Begin With Hangovers Great And Small, It Is Mildly surprising To Find How Few Real Descriptions Of The Experience Our Literature Can Boast.

Real

Hangover

Literature

I've Been To Uganda And To North Korea And To Eritrea, Countless Horror Spots Around The World.

Uganda

Korea

Eritrea

The Press Is Still Investing Itself, It Seems To Me, In A Sort Of Cynicism. It Comes Out Better For Them If They Can Predict Hard Times, Bogging Down, Sniping, Attrition.

Hard Times

Sniping

Investing

It's A Curious Thing In American Life That The Most Abject Nonsense Will Be Excused If The Utterer Can Claim The Sanction Of Religion. A Country Which Forbids An Established Church By Law Is Prey To Any Denomination. The Best That Can Be Said Is That This Is Pluralism Of A Kind.

Country

Atheist

Law

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

We Have Millions And Millions Of North Korean Children Totally Stunted In Mind And Body And Will Have To Be Dealt With At Some Point, Who Have Been Raised To Believe That They Live In A Regime That Is Run By A God.

Running

Children

Believe

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

Inspiration

Reading

Writing

We Are Unlikely To Cease Making Gods Or Inventing Ceremonies To Please Them For As Long As We Are Afraid Of Death, Or Of The Dark, And For As Long As We persist In Self-centeredness. That Could Be A Lengthy Stretch Of Time.

Dark

Self

Long

An Individual Deficient In The Sense Of Humor Represents More Of A Challenge To Our Idea Of The Human Than A Person Of Subnormal Intelligence

Ideas

Challenges

Sense Of Humor

I Mean, What Would I Be Doing If I Couldn't Write? But That Fortunately Hasn't Proved To Be The Case And I Can Read Any Day. I Still Read A Lot, And I Can Write Any Day, But Much More Slowly And Fewer Words.

Mean

Writing

Cases

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

High Moral Character Is Not A Precondition For Great Moral Accomplishments.

Character

Accomplishment

Moral

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

The Prince's Official Job Description As King Will Be 'defender Of The Faith,' Which Currently Means The State-financed Absurdity Of The Anglican Church, But He Has More Than Once Said Publicly That He Wants To Be Anointed As Defender Of All Faiths—another Indication Of The Amazing Conceit He Has Developed In Six Decades Of Performing The Only Job Allowed Him By The Hereditary Principle: That Of Waiting For His Mother To Expire.

Mother

Atheist

Kings

Many Of The Points Made By The Antiwar Movement Have Been Consciously Assimilated By The Pentagon And Its Lawyers And Advisers. Precision Weaponry Is Good In Itself, But Its Ability To Discriminate Is Improving And Will Continue To Improve. Cluster Bombs Are Perhaps Not Good In Themselves, But When They Are Dropped On Identifiable Concentrations Of Taliban Troops, They Do Have A Heartening Effect.

Troops

Bombs

Movement

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

Pakistan Has To Export A Lot Of Uneducated People, Many Of Whom Have Become Infected With The Most Barbaric Reactionary Ideas.

Ideas

People

Pakistan

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

Evolution Is, As Well As Smarter Than We Are, Infinitely More Callous And Cruel, And Also Capricious.

Evolution

Capricious

Callous

The One Thing That The Racist Can Never Manage Is Anything Like Discrimination: He Is Indiscriminate By Definition.

Racist

Definitions

Discrimination

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

Today The Least Educated Of My Children Knows Much More About The Natural Order Than Any Of The Founders Of Religion, And One Would Think-though The Connection Is Not A Fully Demonstrable One-that This Is Why They Seem So Uninterested In Sending Fellow Humans To Hell.

Children

Thinking

Order

Ever Since I Discovered That My God Given Male Member Was Going To Give Me No Peace, I Decided To Give It No Rest In Return.

Giving

Males

Return

I Have More Than Once In My Time Woken Up Feeling Like Death.

Feelings

My Time

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

If I Could Do Just One Thing, It Would Be To Dissociate Faith From Virtue, Now And For Good, And To Expose It For What It Is, A Servile Weakness, A Refuge In Cowardice, And A Willingness To Follow, With Credulity, People Who Are In The Highest Degree Unscrupulous.

People

Religion

Degrees

I'm Terrified Of Losing My Voice.

Voice

Losing

Terrified

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

The Man Who Prays Is The One Who Thinks That God Has Arranged Matters All Wrong, But Who Also Thinks That He Can Instruct God How To Put Them Right.

Prayer

Men

Thinking

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

In One Way, Traveling Has Narrowed My Mind. What I Have Discovered Is Something Very Ordinary And Unexciting, Which Is That Humans Are The Same Everywhere And That The Degree Of Variation Between Members Of Our Species Is Very Slight. This Is Of Course An Encouraging Finding; It Helps Arm You Against News Programs Back Home That Show Seething Or Abject Masses Of Either Fanatical Or Torpid People. In Another Way It Is A Depressing Finding; The Sorts Of Things That Make People Quarrel And Make Them Stupid Are The Same Everywhere.

Depressing

Stupid

Home

When Maimonides Says That The Messiah Will Come But That 'he May Tarry,' We See The Origin Of Every Jewish Shrug From Spinoza To Woody Allen.

May

Spinoza

Woody

The United States Has An Isolationist And Insular Culture, Combined With A Global And Interventionist Posture. This Highly Dangerous And Febrile Mixture, Which Greatly Facilitates The Task Of The Fear-mongers And Chauvinists, Needs A Very Exact And Nuanced Diagnosis. I Don't Think That Analogies From The Totalitarian Model, However Suggestive, Are Sufficient.

Thinking

United States

Tasks

That Most Risky And Volatile Of All Things A Self-pitying Majority.

Self

Majority

All Things

Those Who Had Alleged That A Million Civilians Were Dying From Sanctions Were Willing, Nay Eager, To Keep Those Same Murderous Sanctions If It Meant Preserving Saddam!

Dying

Sanctions

Willing

I Became A Journalist Because One Didn't Have To Specialise.

Journalist

I've Proved To Be As Difficult To Convert As I Am To Hypnotize.

Difficult

The Easiest Way To Establish A Dictatorship Is To Claim You Are God's Representative On Earth.

Religion

Earth

Way

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

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

All The Excitements Of A Prohibited Book Had Their Usual Effect, One Of Which, As Always, Is To Expose The Fact That The Censors Don't Know What They Are Talking About.

Book

Talking

Usual

There Is Almost No Country In Africa Where It Is Not Essential To Know To Which Tribe, Or Which Subgroup Of Which Tribe, The President Belongs. From This Single Piece Of Information You Can Trace The Lines Of Patronage And Allegiance That Define The State.

Country

President

Essentials

What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Be Dismissed Without Evidence.

Inspirational

Wisdom

Atheist

In Order To Be A Part Of The Totalitarian Mind-set, It Is Not Necessary To Wear A Uniform Or Carry A Club Or A Whip. It Is Only Necessary To Wish For Your Own Subjection, And To Delight In The Subjection Of Others.

Order

Mind

Wish

I Was Precocious Enough To Watch The News And Read The Papers, And I Can Remember October 1956, The Simultaneous Crisis In Hungary And Suez, Very Well. And Getting A Sense That The World Was Dangerous, A Sense That The Game Was Up, That The Empire Was Over.

Games

Watches

News

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

What Is Your Idea Of Earthly Happiness? To Be Vindicated In My Own Lifetime.

Ideas

Lifetime

My Own

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

Along With Islam And Christianity, Judaism Does Insist That Some Turgid And Contradictory And Sometimes Evil And Mad Texts, Obviously Written By Fairly Unexceptional Humans, Are In Fact The Word Of God. I Think That The Indispensable Condition Of Any Intellectual Liberty Is The Realisation That There Is No Such Thing.

Thinking

Evil

Mad

Violent, Irrational, Intolerant, Allied To Racism And Tribalism And Bigotry, Invested In Ignorance And Hostile To Free Inquiry, Contemptuous Of Women And Coercive Toward Children: Organized Religion Ought To Have A Great Deal On Its Conscience.

Children

Ignorance

Racism

If I Convert It's Because It's Better That A Believer Dies Than That An Atheist Does.

Atheist

Atheism

Doe

Philosophy Begins Where Religion Ends, Just As By Analogy Chemistry Begins Where Alchemy Runs Out, And Astronomy Takes The Place Of Astrology.

Running

Philosophy

Astrology

The Reading Public Isn't Born That Doesn't Think Foreigners Are Either Funny Or Faintly Sinister.

Reading

Thinking

Born

The Iranian People Were Converted To Islam Not Very Much Longer After The Conquest Of The Arab World By Islam, But They Refused To Adopt The Arabic Language, And It's A Great Point Of Pride To Them That Persian Culture And The Persian Language And Persian Literature Survived The Conversion To Islam. And The Conversion To Islam Also Was For Most Of Them Not The Sunni Majority Form, But The Shia One. So There's A Great Discrepancy Between Iranian Society And Many Other Of What We Think Of As Arab Muslim States And Systems.

Pride

Thinking

Discrepancies Between

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

No Society Has Gone The Way Of Gulags Or Concentration Camps By Following The Path Of Spinoza And Einstein And Jefferson And Thomas Paine

Gone

Way

Gulags

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

In One Way, I Suppose, I Have Been 'in Denial' For Some Time, Knowingly Burning The Candle At Both Ends And Finding That It Often Gives A Lovely Light.

Light

Giving

Lovely

But You'll Notice, You Will Notice That Russia And China, Invariably At The United Nations, Move To Block American Action, To Repress Or Hem In Or Punish Other Kinds Of Outlaw. Who Stands Behind Mugabi At The United Nations? Russia And China Do. Who Tried Successfully To Prevent The United Nations From Speaking With One Voice On Its Most Signal Violation Of Its Resolutions, Iraq? Russia And China, Again. North Korea The Same. Burma The Same.

Block

Moving

Russia

[i]f You Think That American Imperialism And Its Globalised, Capitalist Form Is The Most Dangerous Thing In The World, That Means You Don't Think The Islamic Republic Of Iran Or North Korea Or The Taliban Is As Bad.

Islamic

Mean

Thinking

Everybody Does Have A Book In Them, But In Most Cases That's Where It Should Stay.

Book

Writing

Doe

How Dismal It Is To See Present Day Americans Yearning For The Very Orthodoxy That Their Country Was Founded To Escape.

Country

Atheist

Atheism

Everything Everyone Thinks They Know About [mother Teresa] Is False. It Must Be The Single Most Successful Emotional Con Job Of The Twentieth Century.

Mother

Jobs

Successful

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

It's Much Worse To See A Woman Drunk Than A Man: I Don't Know Quite Why This Is True But It Just Is. Don't Ever Be Responsible For It.

Men

Drunk

Responsible

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

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

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

The Iraqi Baath Socialist Party Was Modelled In Large Part On Admiration For European National Socialist And Fascist Movements, Hoped To Emulate Them Especially In Their Nationalism Against The West. But Mutated By Saddam Hussein It Became Also One That Very, Very Much Admired, And Grew A Special Moustache In Admiration Of The Work Of Yosif Vissarionovitch Dzugashvili, The Great Georgian Known To Us Historically As Stalin. So You Had Him In Modern Iraq, A Regime In Our Own Time, That Was Openly, Directly Modelled Upon The Two Most Extreme Examples Of European Totalitarianism.

Party

Two

Iraq

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

Ronald Reagan Used To Alarm Other Constituencies By Speaking Freely About The End Times Foreshadowed In The Bible.

Talking

Alarms

Used

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

Will An Iraq War Make Our Al Qaeda Problem Worse? Not Likely.

War

Iraq

Als

Some People Say That Without God, People Would Give Themselves Permission To Do Anything. [yet] Only With God, Only With The View That God's On Your Side, Can People Give Themselves Permission To Do Things That Otherwise Would Be Called Satanic.

Views

Your Side

People

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

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

I Don't Think The Soul Is Immortal, Or At Least Not Immortal In Individuals, But It May Be Immortal As An Aspect Of The Human Personality Because When I Talk About What Literature Nourishes, It Would Be Silly Of Me Or Reductionist To Say That It Nourishes The Brain.

Silly

Thinking

Personality

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.

Crazy

Believe

Garden

There Is No English Surname, However Ancient And Dignified, That Cannot Instantly Be Improved By The Prefix ‘spanker’.

Ancient

Surnames

Literature, Not Scripture, Sustains The Mind And - Since There Is No Other Metaphor - Also The Soul.

Soul

Mind

Literature

There Are Things About Quitting The Smoking Habit For Which Nobody Prepares You. Did I Have Any Idea That I Would Indulge In Long, Drooling-nay, Dribbling-lascivious Dreams In Which I Was Still Wreathed In Fragrant Blue Fumes? I Would Wake With The Complete And Guilty Conviction That I Had Sinned In Word And Deed While I Was Asleep.

Dream

Blue

Ideas

Endless Praise And Adoration, Limitless Abnegation And Abjection Of Self; A Celestial North Korea.

Self

Korea

Abjection

I Want To Urge You Very Strongly To Travel As Much As You Can, And To Evolve Yourself As An Internationalist. It's As Important A Part Of Your Education As A Radical As The Reading Of Any Book.

Travel

Book

Reading

I Would Say That If You Don't Believe That Jesus Of Nazareth Was The Christ And Messiah, And That He Rose Again From The Dead And By His Sacrifice Our Sins Are Forgiven, You're Really Not In Any Meaningful Sense A Christian.

Christian

Meaningful

Jesus

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

Many Writers, Especially Male Ones, Have Told Us That It Is The Decease Of The Father Which Opens The Prospect Of One's Own End, And Affords An Unobstructed View Of The Undug But Awaiting Grave That Says 'you're Next.' Unfilial As This May Seem, That Was Not At All So In My Own Case. It Was Only When I Watched Alexander [my Own Son] Being Born That I Knew At Once That My Own Funeral Director Had Very Suddenly, But Quite Unmistakably, Stepped Onto The Stage. I Was Surprised By How Calmly I Took This, But Also By How Reluctant I Was To Mention It To My Male Contemporaries.

Father

Son

Views

Religion Is Not Just Incongruent With Morality, But In Essential Ways Incompatible With It.

Essentials

Way

Morality

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

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.

Motivational

Song

Atheist

The Crucial Distinction Between Systems...was No Longer Ideological. The Main Political Difference Was Between Those Who Did, And Those Who Did Not, Believe That The Citizen Could -- Or Should -- Be The Property Of The State.

Believe

Political Differences

Citizens

Jesus Is Santa Claus For Adults.

Jesus

Santa

Adults

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

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

Here We Are Then, I Was Thinking, In A War To The Finish Between Everything I Love And Everything I Hate. Fine. We Will Win And They Will Lose. A Pity That We Let Them Pick The Time And Place Of The Challenge, But We Can And We Will Make Up For That.

Hate

War

Winning

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

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

I Don't Think It's Possible To Have A Sense Of Tragedy Without Having A Sense Of Humor.

Thinking

Tragedy

Sense Of Humor

My Favorite Time In The Cycles Of Public Life Is The Time When The Pope Is Dead And They Haven't Elected A New One. There's No One In The World Who Is Infallible For Those Weeks. And You Know, I Don't Miss It.

Missing

World

Life Is

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

This Huge And Terrible Industry [the Slave Trade] Was Blessed By All Churches And For A Long Time Aroused Absolutely No Religious Protest. . . . In The Eighteenth Century, A Few Dissenting Mennonites And Quakers In America Began To Call For Abolition, As Did Some Freethinkers Like Thomas Paine.

Religious

Blessed

America

Happiness Is Fleeting And Life Is Brief, But We Know That, Nonetheless, Life Can Be Savored And That Happiness, Even Of The Ecstatic Kind, Is Available To Us.

Fleeting

Kind

Life Is

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

The Fact Is: It's True What They Say About The United States. It Is A Land Of Opportunity. It Is Too Various To Get Bored With It.

Opportunity

Land

Bored

A Faction Willing To Take The Risks Of Making War On The Ossified Status Quo In The Middle East Can Be Described As Many Things, But Not As Conservative.

War

Risk

East

The Totalitarian, To Me, Is The Enemy - The One That's Absolute, The One That Wants Control Over The Inside Of Your Head, Not Just Your Actions And Your Taxes.

Enemy

Want

Action

The Finest Fury Is The Most Controlled.

Finest

Fury

Controlled

It Is A Pity That...the Majority Of Feminists And Their Allies Have Stuck To The Dead Ground Of "me Decade" Possessive Individualism, An Ideology That Has More In Common Than It Admits With The Prehistoric Right, Which It Claims To Oppose But Has In Fact Encouraged.

Abortion

Feminist

Allies

Take The Risk Of Thinking For Yourself

Thinking

Risk

Greatest Atheist

Shepherds Don't Look After Sheep Because They Love Them - Although I Do Think Some Shepherds Like Their Sheep Too Much. They Look After Their Sheep So They Can, First, Fleece Them And Second, Turn Them Into Meat. That's Much More Like The Priesthood As I Know It.

Thinking

Sheep

Shepherds

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

It's Considered Acceptable In Our Culture To Approach Perfect Strangers, As Often Or Not Who May Be In Extremis, And Evangelise. I Don't See Why That's Considered A Normal Thing.

Perfect

May

Normal

A Bit Of A Stomach Give A Chap A Position In Society.

Giving

Stomach

Chaps

No Child's Behind Left.

Children

Religion

Behinds

Authors Who Moan With Praise For Their Editors Always Seem To Reek Slightly Of The Stockholm Syndrome.

Writing

Editors

Praise

There Are All Kinds Of Stupid People That Annoy Me But What Annoys Me Most Is A Lazy Argument.

Stupid

People

Lazy

The Violence In The Bible Is Appalling.

Violence

Benito Mussolini Had Barely Seized Power In Italy Before The Vatican Made An Official Treaty With Him, Known As The Lateran Pact Of 1929. Under The Terms Of This Deal, Catholicism Became The Only Recognized Religion In Italy, With Monopoly Powers Over Matters Such As Birth, Marriage, Death, And Education, And In Return Urged Its Followers To Vote For Mussolini's Party. Pope Pius Xi Described Ii Duce (“the Leader”) As “a Man Sent By Providence.”

Party

Men

Europe

I Didn't Think Marilyn Monroe Was Beautiful. It Used To Worry Me. I Thought Maybe I'm Not Put Together Like The Other Chaps.

Beautiful

Thinking

Worry

The (catholic) Church, As Far As I Know, Has Not Endorsed Any War As Just Since It Supported General Franco's Invasion Of Spain To Destroy The Spanish Republic With A Muslim Mercenary Army In The Thirties, On The Side Of Hitler.

War

Army

Catholic

The Gods That We've Made Are Exactly The Gods You'd Expect To Be Made By A Species That's About Half A Chromosome Away From Being Chimpanzee.

Religion

Half

Chimpanzees

How Do I Know That I Know This, Except That I've Always Been Taught This And Never Heard Anything Else? [...] How Sure Am I Of My Own Views? Don't Take Refuge In The False Security Of Consensus, And The Feeling That Whatever You Think You're Bound To Be Okay, Because You're In The Safely Moral Majority.

Thinking

Views

Feelings

To Be Against Rationalization Is Not The Same As To Be Opposed To Reasoning.

Reasoning

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

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

The Person Who Is Certain, And Who Claims Divine Warrant For His Certainty, Belongs Now To The Infancy Of Our Species.

Humility

Divine

Claims

Not Since North Korean Media Declared Kim Jong-il To Be The Reincarnation Of Kim Il Sung Has There Been Such A Blatant Attempt To Create A Necrocracy, Or Perhaps Mausolocracy, In Which A Living Claimant Assumes The Fleshly Mantle Of The Departed.

Media

Departed

Kim Il Sung

I Became A Journalist Partly So That I Wouldn't Ever Have To Rely On The Press For My Information.

Information

Journalist

Rely

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.

Cancer

Aunt

Doctors

How Is The United States At Once The Most Conservative And Commercial And The Most Revolutionary Society On Earth?

United States

Earth

Conservative

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

Thinking

I Retain What's Interesting To Me, But I Don't Have A Lot Of Strategic Depth.

Interesting

Depth

Strategic

Heroism Breaks Its Heart, And Idealism Its Back, On The Intransigence Of The Credulous And The Mediocre, Manipulated By The Cynical And The Corrupt.

Hero

Heart

Isms

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

In My Life, The Only Certainty Is To Be Uncertain. I'm An Unbeliever Who Believes In Skepticism. I'm Only Sure About Being Unsure.

Believe

Uncertain

Skepticism

It's Called Faith Because It's Not Knowledge.

History Is A Tragegy, Not A Morality Tale.

History

Morality

Tales

So Far, I Have Decided To Take Whatever My Disease Can Throw At Me, And To Stay Combative Even While Taking The Measure Of My Inevitable Decline. I Repeat, This Is No More Than What A Healthy Person Has To Do In Slower Motion.

Healthy

Disease

Decline

I Am, I Hope, Never Offensive By Accident.

Offensive

Accidents

In Our Time, The Symbol Of State Intrusion Into The Private Life Is The Mandatory Urine Test.

Tests

Life Is

Intrusion

No, Nothing Is Sacred. And Even If There Were To Be Something Called Sacred, We Mere Primates Wouldn't Be Able To Decide Which Book Or Which Idol Or Which City Was The Truly Holy One. Thus, The Only Thing That Should Be Upheld At All Costs And Without Qualification Is The Right Of Free Expression, Because If That Goes, Then So Do All Other Claims Of Right As Well.

Book

Expression

Idols

For Some Reason, Which I Believe I Can Guess, The Churches/mosques Want Control Of People When Or While They Are The Most Vulnerable Or Suggestible. If They Can't Get Them In School, Then They Get Them When They Are Hungry, Or Frightened, Or Ill, Or Homeless, Or Unemployed. Same Difference. Here's Your Gruel, And Here's A Tract.

Believe

School

Differences

It’s Considered Perfectly Normal In This Society To Approach Dying People Who You Don’t Know But Who Are Unbelievers And Say, ‘now Are You Gonna Change Your Mind?’ That Is Considered Almost A Polite Question.

Perfectly Normal

People

Mind

If I Was To Interrupt This Article Every Few Sentences, Asking You Whether Or Not I Was Making A Good Impression On You, I Hope And Believe That You Would Think I Was A Servile Jerk. Yet This Is What Our Politicians Are Doing In Every Speech.

Believe

Thinking

Political

Virtue And Merit Can Become Their Opposites If They Are Exacted Or Compelled.

Opposites

Merit

Virtue

Europeans Think Americans Are Fat, Vulgar, Greedy, Stupid, Ambitious And Ignorant And So On. And They've Taken As Their Own, As Their Representative American Someone Who Actually Embodies All Of Those Qualities.

Stupid

Taken

Thinking

It's Probably A Merciful Thing That Pain Is Impossible To Describe From Memory

Pain

Memories

Impossible

Your Least Favorite Virtue, Or Nominee For The Most Overrated One? Faith. Closely Followed—in View Of The Overall Shortage Of Time—by Patience.

Atheist

Views

Virtue

Islamophobia: A Word Created By Fascists, And Used By Cowards, To Manipulate Morons.

Coward

Used

Fascists

No One Has The Right To Tell Me What To Do Because He Has A Divine Warrant.

Religion

Divine

Warrants

Distrust Compassion; Prefer Dignity For Yourself And Others. Don't Be Afraid To Be Thought Arrogant Or Selfish.

Selfish

Compassion

Mammals

I'm Not Very Impressed By People Who Yell "traitor" And "communist" And Other Less Printable Things. I Don't Like It.

People

Communist

Traitor

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

I'm Not Even An Atheist So Much As I Am An Antitheist; I Not Only Maintain That All Religions Are Versions Of The Same Untruth, But I Hold That The Influence Of Churches, And The Effect Of Religious Belief, Is Positively Harmful.

Religious

Atheist

Atheism

The Human Wish To Credit Good Things As Miraculous And To Charge Bad Things To Another Account Is Apparently Universal.

Wish

Credit

Good Things

All Of Life Is A Wager

Wagers

Life Is

"bombing Afghanistan Back Into The Stone Age" Was Quite A Favourite Headline For Some Wobbly Liberals. The Slogan Does All The Work. But An Instant's Thought Shows That Afghanistan Is Being, If Anything, Bombed Out Of The Stone Age.

Age

Doe

Stones

We Have Lived In A World Where The Discoveries Of Physics And Genetics Are Far More Awe-inspiring, As Well As Infinitely More Liberating, Than The Claims Of Any Religion.

Discovery

World

Physics

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

Time Spent Arguing With The Faithful Is, Oddly Enough, Almost Never Wasted.

Time

Faithful

Arguing

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

I Was Taught Very Early On That The State Can Be, And Is, A Liar And A Murderer.

Liars

Taught

States

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.

Uplifting

Strong

Atheist

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

Religion Is Compulsory In English Schools, You Know.

School

Knows

Compulsory

Of Course We Have Free Will Because We Have No Choice But To Have It.

Choices

Free Will

Courses

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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