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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.

-Christopher Hitchens

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Hannah Arendt In Her

Christopher Hitchens

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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.

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Those Who Want To Be Offended Don't Have The Right To Try And Close Down The Newspaper That Offends Them.

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.

The First Thing I Can Remember I Ever Wanted Was To Go To The United States. And For Reasons That Are As Conventional As You Can Imagine: I Wanted To Know If It Was Really True That It Was The Land Of Opportunity, Of Democracy, And Individual Liberty.

The Fragility Of Love Is What Is Most At Stake Here—humanity's Most Crucial Three-word Avowal Is Often Uttered Only To Find Itself Suddenly Embarrassing Or Orphaned Or Isolated Or Ill-timed—but Strangely Enough It Can Work Better As A Literal Or Reassuring Statement Than A Transcendent Or Numinous Or Ecstatic One.

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.

If I'm In A Political Argument, I Think I Can, With Reasonable Accuracy And Without Boasting, Put The Other Person's Side Of The Case At Least As Well As They Could. One Has To Be Able To Say That In Any Well-conducted Argument.

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.

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.

Prince Of Peace

If You Think All This Is Going On, All These Gigantic Fields Of Gravity And Light With You In Mind, Then You Really Do Have A Self-centredness Problem.

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.

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.

It Is Not That There Are No Certainties, It Is That It Is An Absolute Certainty That There Are No Certainties.

Absolute Certainty

No Possible Future Government In Kabul Can Be Worse Than The Taliban, And No Thinkable Future Government Would Allow The Level Of Al Qaeda Gangsterism To Recur. So The Outcome Is Proportionate And Congruent With International Principles Of Self-defense.

She's Got No Charisma Of Any Kind [but] I Can Imagine Her Being Mildly Useful To A Low-rank Porn Director.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where Would You Like To Live? In A State Of Conflict Or A Conflicted State?

Well Look, I Mean, I Think That Prayer And Holy Water, And Things Like That Are All Fine. They Don't Do Any Good, But They Don't Necessarily Do Any Harm. It's Touching To Be Thought Of In That Way. It Makes Up For Those Who Tell Me That I've Got My Just Desserts.

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.

Discrepancies Between

Our Belief Is Not A Belief. Our Principles Are Not A Faith. We Do Not Rely Soley Upon Science And Reason, Because These Are Necessary Rather Than Sufficient Factors, But We Distrust Anything That Contradicts Science Or Outrages Reason. We May Differ On Many Things, But What We Respect Is Free Inquiry, Openmindedness, And The Pursuit Of Ideas For Their Own Sake.

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.

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.

Once You Assume A Creator And A Plan, It Makes Us Objects In A Cruel Experiment Whereby We Are Created Sick And Commanded To Be Well.

Haven't We All Heard Some Irritating Person Saying That If So-and-so Is Elected, Then He/she Is Absolutely Definitely Leaving The Country? There Must Be Some Reason Why It Is Mainly Liberals Who Tend To Say This, But The Chief Thing To Note About The Promise Is That It Is Usually An Empty One.

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.

If You've Led A Rather Bohemian And Rackety Life, As I Have, It's Precisely The Cancer That You'd Expect To Get. That's A Bit Of A Yawn.

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

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.

Political Differences

Mt [mother Teresa] Was Not A Friend Of The Poor. She Was A Friend Of Poverty. She Said That Suffering Was A Gift From God. She Spent Her Life Opposing The Only Known Cure For Poverty, Which Is The Empowerment Of Women And The Emancipation Of Them From A Livestock Version Of Compulsory Reproduction.

Since It Is Obviously Inconceivable That All Religions Can Be Right, The Most Reasonable Conclusion Is That They Are All Wrong.

I'm Quite Convinced In My Own Mind That Those Who Were Arguing That [the Need To Intervene In Iraq] Was A More Immediate One Than Some Believed - Were I'm Sure Convinced That They Were Right On Fact, I Don't Think They Were Making It Up. So As To Lying, I Don't Think It Has Been Established That Any Lies Were Told.

I Have Quite A Decent Constitution In Spite Of All My Abuse Of It And My Advanced Years. I'm Still Quite Robust.

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.

I Have A Strong Constitution Which Has Served Me Quite Well, Though If I Hadn't Had Such A Strong One I Might Have Led A More Healthy Life Perhaps.

Religion, It Is True, Still Possesses The Huge If Cumbersome And Unwieldy Advantage Of Having Come First.

Yes, I, Well, When I Write, As Often As I Can, I Try To Write As If I'm Talking To People. It Doesn't Always Work, And One Shouldn't Always Try It, But I Try And Write As If I Am Talking, And Trying To Engage The Reader In Conversation.

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

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

Here’s Someone Who Says There’s No Such Thing, It’s All Intelligent Design. 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.

We Keep On Being Told That Religion, Whatever Its Imperfections, At Least Instills Morality. On Every Side, There Is Conclusive Evidence That The Contrary Is The Case And That Faith Causes People To Be More Mean, More Selfish, And Perhaps Above All, More Stupid.

No Moral Person Would Do Such A Thing Unless They Thought It Was Divinely Warranted.

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.

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.

If Anything Qualifies As An Irony Of History It Would Be This: That Marx And Engels Throughout The Nineteenth Century Wrote About America The United States As The Great Country Of The Future, Of Freedom And Equality And A Good Life For The Working Man, And A Country Of Revolution And Emancipation, And Of Russia As The Great Country Of Despotism, Backwardness, Savagery And Superstition.

The One Unforgivable Sin Is To Be Boring.

Unforgivable Sin

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.

It's Surprising To Me How Many Of My Friends Send Christmas Cards, Or Holiday Cards, Including My Atheist And Secular Friends.

If Someone Tells Me That I've Hurt Their Feelings I'm Still Waiting To Hear What Your Point Is.

It Was Not For The Sake Of Oil That The Risky Decision To Cease This Corrupt Coexistence Was Made. But At Least Now The Iraqi People Have A Chance Of Controlling Their Own Main Resource, And It Will Be Our Task To Ensure That The Funding And Revenue Are Transparent Instead Of Opaque.

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.

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.

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.

Mockery Of Religion Is One Of The Most Essential Things... One Of The Beginnings Of Human Emancipation Is The Ability To Laugh At Authority.

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.

When You Fall Ill, People Send You Cds. Very Often, In My Experience, These Are By Leonard Cohen

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.

I Have Met Some Highly Intelligent Believers, But History Has No Record To Say That [s]he Knew Or Understood The Mind Of God. Yet This Is Precisely The Qualification Which The Godly Must Claim—so Modestly And So Humbly—to Possess. It Is Time To Withdraw Our 'respect' From Such Fantastic Claims, All Of Them Aimed At The Exertion Of Power Over Other Humans In The Real And Material World.

My Political Life Has Been Informed By The View That If There Was Any Truth To Religion There Wouldn't Really Be Any Need For Politics.

A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory. Kissinger Is A Stupendous Liar With A Remarkable Memory.

Here Is The Point About Myself And My Co-thinkers. Our Belief Is Not A Belief. Our Principles Are Not A Faith. We Do Not Hold Our Convictions Dogmatically. We Believe With Certainty That An Ethical Life Can Be Lived Without Religion. And We Know For A Fact That The Corollary Holds True - That Religion Has Caused Innumerate People Not Just To Conduct Themselves No Better Than Others, But To Award Themselves Permission To Behave In Ways That Would Make A Brothel-keeper Or An Ethnic Cleanser Raise An Eyebrow.

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

Only A Complete Moral Idiot Can Believe For An Instant That We Are Fighting Against The Wretched Of The Earth. We Are Fighting, As I Said Before, Against The Scum Of The Earth

Scum Of The Earth

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.

Exceptional Claims, Require Exceptional Evidence.

I've Had Some Dark Nights Of The Soul, Of Course, But Giving In To Depression Would Be A Sellout, A Defeat.

So Here We Have Found A Means Of A) Alienating Even The Most Flexible And Patient Palestinians; While B) Frustrating The Efforts Of The More Principled And Compromising Israelis; While C) Empowering And Financing Some Of The Creepiest Forces In American And Israeli Society; And D) Heaping Ordure On Our Own Secular Founding Documents. When Will The Justice Department And The Congress And The Supreme Court Become Aware Of This Huge And Rank Offense, Which Is Designed To Bring Us Ever Nearer To Holy War?

There Is A Reason For The Affected Profession Of " Anarchist Sympathies" Among Tories And Grandees, And Of " Libertarian Principles" By Hobbesian Yahoos Of The Right. Among The Former, One Sees The Upholding Of The View That A Gentleman's Business And Property Are His Own, And None Of The Government's. Among The Latter, A Distaste For Democracy, For Taxation, And For The Need To Consult Others About The Planet.

I Do Not Believe Any Of The Statistical Claims That Are Made About Public Opinion. I Don't See Why Anybody Does.

[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.

Ordinary Morality Is Innate In My View.

Islam Is At Once The Most And The Least Interesting Of The World's Monotheisms. It Builds Upon Its Primitive Jewish And Christian Predecessors, Selecting A Chunk Here And A Shard There, And Thus If These Fall, It Partly Falls Also.

Gullibility And Credulity Are Considered Undesireable Qualities In Every Department Of Human Life - Except Religion ... Why Are We Praised By Godly Men For Surrendering Our 'godly Gift' Of Reason When We Cross Their Mental Thresholds?

A Lot Of People, Because Of My Contempt For The False Consolations Of Religion, Think Of Me As A Symbolic Public Opponent Of That In Extremis. And Sometimes That Makes Me Feel A Bit Alarmed, To Be The Repository Of Other People's Hope.

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.

To The Dumb Question, 'why Me?' The Cosmos Barely Bothers To Return The Reply, 'why Not?'

The Russians Are Going To Be Expansionist Whether We [usa] Provoke Them To It Or Not. Russians Keep Saying That We're Trying To Encircle Them. In What Sense Does The Independence Of Kosovo, A Land-locked Province, Former Yugoslavia, With No Common Border With Russia, Threaten Russia With Encirclement? This Is Insulting. In What Sense Does The Independence Of Georgia Constitute An Encirclement? What We Are Facing, And We May As Well Give It Its Right Name, Is What I Called It Earlier, A Chauvinistic, Theocratic In Part, Xenophobic Russian Imperialism.

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.

We Know Of No Spectacle More Ridiculous—or More Contemptible—than That Of The Religious Reactionaries Who Dare To Re-write The History Of Our Republic. Or Who Try To Do So. Is It Possible That, In Their Vanity And Stupidity, They Suppose That They Can Erase The Name Of Thomas Jefferson And Replace It With The Name Of Some Faith-based Mediocrity Whose Name Is Already Obscure? If So, We Cheerfully Resolve To Mock Them, And To Give Them The Lie In Their Teeth.

There's Been Some Research In Cognitive Science, I'm Told, That Discloses That There Have Always Been Perhaps 10 To 15 Percent Of People Who Are, As Pascal Puts It, So Made That They Cannot Believe. To Us, When People Talk About Faith, It's White Noise.

When The [us] President Writes To Kim Jong Il, The Son, The Dear Leader, He Doesn't Call Him Dear Mr President, He Calls Him Dear Mr Secretary. Have You Ever Noticed That? Why Is That? Because He's Not The President Of North Korea, He's The Head Of The Communist Party, The North Korean Workers' Party And He's The Head Of The Army. He's Not Head Of The State. The Head Of The State Is His Father, Who's Been Dead For 15 Years.

In The Early Days Of The December That My Father Was To Die, My Younger Brother Brought Me The News That I Was A Jew. I Was Then A Transplanted Englishman In America, Married, With One Son And, Though Unconsoled By Any Religion, A Nonbelieving Member Of Two Christian Churches. On Hearing The Tidings, I Was Pleased To Find That I Was Pleased.

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

In Particular, It Is Absurd To Hope To Banish Envy Of Other People's Possessions Or Fortunes, If Only Because The Spirit Of Envy Can Lead To Emulation And Ambition And Have Positive Consequences.

Islam Makes Very Large Claims For Itself. In Its Art, There Is A Prejudice Against Representing The Human Form At All. The Prohibition On Picturing The Prophet - Who Was Only Another Male Mammal - Is Apparently Absolute. So Is The Prohibition On Pork Or Alcohol Or, In Some Muslim Societies, Music Or Dancing. Very Well Then, Let A Good Muslim Abstain Rigorously From All These. But If He Claims The Right To Make Me Abstain As Well, He Offers The Clearest Possible Warning And Proof Of An Aggressive Intent.

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.

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

In A Pyongyang Restaurant, Don't Ever Ask For A Doggie Bag.

Reagan Is Doing To The Country What He Can No Longer Do To His Wife.

I Don't Want Them (religious Followers) Trying To Inflict Their Belief On Me.

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.

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

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.

If You Can Charm Everyone It Means You Don't Care About Anyone In Particular.

In Ridiculing A Pathetic Human Fallacy, Which Seeks Explanation Where None Need Be Sought And Which Multiplies Unnecessary Assumptions, One Should Not Mimic Primitive Ontology In Order To Challenge It. Better To Dispose Of The Needless Assumption Altogether. This Holds True For Everything From Noah's Flood To The Holocaust.

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.

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.

I Have Been Called Arrogant Myself In My Time, And Hope To Earn The Title Again, But To Claim That I Am Privy To The Secrets Of The Universe And Its Creator - That's Beyond My Conceit.

Principles Have A Way Of Enduring, As Do The Few Irreducible Individuals Who Maintain Allegiance To Them.

I Don’t Have A Body, I Am A Body.

Thus, Though I Dislike To Differ With Such A Great Man, Voltaire Was Simply Ludicrous When He Said That If God Did Not Exist It Would Be Necessary To Invent Him. The Human Invention Of God Is The Problem To Begin With.

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.

I Learned That To Be Amusing Was Not To Be Frivolous And That Language - Always The Language - Was The Magic Key As Much To Prose As To Poetry.

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

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.

I Joined A Small But Growing Post-trotskyite Luxembourgist Sect.

Religion Is Part Of The Human Make-up. It's Also Part Of Our Cultural And Intellectual History. Religion Was Our First Attempt At Literature, The Texts, Our First Attempt At Cosmology, Making Sense Of Where We Are In The Universe, Our First Attempt At Health Care, Believing In Faith Healing, Our First Attempt At Philosophy.

I Think That There Is No Supernatural Dimension. The Natural World Is Quite Wonderful Enough. The More We Know About It, The Much More Wonderful It Is Than Any Supernatural Proposition.

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

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.

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.

One Can't Indefinitely Do For Somebody What He Is Reluctant To Do For Himself.

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.

Do Not Imagine That You Can Escape Judgment If You Rob People With A False Prospectus Rather Than With A Knife.

It's Amazing How Relaxing It Is Not To Claim You Know More Than You Do. I'm Surprised That Those Who Claim To Speak In The Name Of God Don't Take More Advantage Of This Relief.

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

The Postmodernists' Tyranny Wears People Down By Boredom And Semi-literate Prose.

The True Essence Of A Dictatorship Is In Fact Not Its Regularity But Its Unpredictability And Caprice; Those Who Live Under It Must Never Be Able To Relax, Must Never Be Quite Sure If They Have Followed The Rules Correctly Or Not.

Take The Risk Of Thinking For Yourself. Much More Happiness, Truth, Beauty And Wisdom Will Come To You That Way.

I Learned That Very Often The Most Intolerant And Narrow-minded People Are The Ones Who Congratulate Themselves On Their Tolerance And Open-mindedness.

It Ought To Be An Offense To Be Excruciating And Unfunny In Circumstances Where Your Audience Is Almost Morally Obliged To Enthuse.

I Have Always Found It Quaint And Rather Touching That There Is A Movement [libertarians] In The Us That Thinks Americans Are Not Yet Selfish Enough.

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.

It Is Exactly The Fear Of Revenge That Motivates The Deepest Crimes, From The Killing Of The Enemy's Children Lest They Grow Up To Play Their Own Part, To The Erasure Of The Enemy's Graveyards And Holy Places So That His Hated Name Can Be Forgotten.

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.

I'm Not Resigned, But I'm Realistic Too. The Statistics In My Case Are Very Poor. Not Many People Come Through Esophageal Cancer And Live To Talk About It, Or Not For Long.

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.

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

Anyone Who Can Look Me In The Eye And Say They Prefer The Story Of Moses Or Jesus Or Mohammed To The Life Of Socrates Is Intellectually Defective.

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.

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

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.

Of Course, I Do Everything For Money.

People Are Frightened Of Death, And The Central Lie Of All Religion Is That There’s A Cure For This And An Exception We’ve Made In Your Own Case: An Eternal Life Offered If You Make The Right Propitiations And The Right Abjections. Well, I’m Sorry. I Think That It's The Height Of Immorality To Lie To People Like That. That’s Why [religion] Survives.

The Secular Argument, Or The Liberal Argument, Is To As Much As Possible Remove Taboos So Things Do Not Become Unmentionable; To Let Some Air Into The Discussion.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Gentleman Is Never Rude Except On Purpose - I Can Honestly Be Nasty Sober, Believe You Me.

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?

I'd Like To Prove To Other People That It's Not The End Of Everything To Be Diagnosed With Cancer.

Nothing Could Make Me Forget What The Reagan Years Had Actually Been Like.

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.

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

Your Ideal Authors Ought To Pull You From The Foundering Of Your Previous Existence, Not Smilingly Guide You Into A Friendly And Peaceable Harbor.

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

Nonintervention Does Not Mean That Nothing Happens. It Means That Something Else Happens.

All Of Life Is A Wager

Judaism Is Not Just One More Religion, But In Its Way The Root Of Religious Evil

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.

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.

Unlike Other Countries, It Was Founded On Written Proclamations. America Is An Ideal As Well As A Republic. Its Documents Are Open To Revisions. They're Works In Progress. There's An Invitation To Participate.

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.

[today's Left] Would Have Left Us With Slobodan Milosevic In Power, Bosnia Ethnically Cleansed, Kosovo Part Of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan Under The Taliban, And Iraq The Property Of A Psychopathic Crime Family. Now, I'm Sorry To Say, I've No Patience With That Leftist Mentality Anymore.

I Don't Think There's Any Need To Have Essays Advocating Selfishness Among Human Beings; I Don't Know What Your Impression Has Been, But Some Things Require No Further Reinforcement.

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.

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.)

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'.

Friendship Love

If Religious Instruction Were Not Allowed Until The Child Had Attained The Age Of Reason, We Would Be Living In A Quite Different World.

Forget It. Never Explain; Never Apologize. You Can Either Write Posthumously Or You Can't.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

A Panel At A Beautiful Annual Literary Festival In Brazil, Held In The Almost Utopian Coastal Town Of Parati, Found Me Matched With Fernando Gabeira. This Comparison Reduced My Own Limited Charisma Value To Something Like Zero: Gabeira Has Excelled At Every Cultural Activity In Brazil.

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.

Arguments That Explain Everything... Explain Nothing

I Don't Think Consensus-building Politics Is What I'm Meant To Be Doing.

Consensus Building

I Say 'merry Christmas' To People I Don't Know, Or To People I Know Are Christians. I Say 'happy Hanukkah' To People I Know To Be Or Suspect To Be Jewish. And I Don't Say 'happy Kwanzaa,' Because I Think African Americans Get Enough Insults All Year Round.

Merry Christmas

I'm Afraid The Ss's Relationship With The Catholic Church Is Something The Church Still Has To Deal With And Does Not Deny.

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.

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.

You Notice How Liberals Keep Saying, 'if Only Islam Would Have A Reformation' - It Can't Have One. It Says It Can't. It's Extremely Dangerous In That Way.

Religion Makes Intelligent People Say And Do Wacky Things, Believe And Affirm Crazy Things.

A Great Voice Has Fallen Silent. A Great Heart Has Stopped.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If The Qur'an Was The Word Of God, It Had Been Dictated On A Very Bad Day.

The Beauty Of Science Hugely Outranks The Charms Of Superstition.

The Violence In The Bible Is Appalling.

If You Think That The Intifada In France Is About Housing, Go And Try Covering The Story Wearing A Yarmulka .

And The Pleasures And Rewards Of The Intellect Are Inseparable From Angst, Uncertainty, Conflict And Even Despair.

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.

Knowing That We Are Primates, I Think, Is A Fascinating Discovery, And A Very Interesting And Rather Cheering One.

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.

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

Cancer Victimhood Contains A Permanent Temptation To Be Self-centred And Even Solipsistic.

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.

What Is It You Most Dislike? Stupidity, Especially In Its Nastiest Forms Of Racism And Superstition.

To Be In Opposition Is Not To Be A Nihilist.

There Are Days When I Miss My Old Convictions As If They Were An Amputated Limb. But In General I Feel Better, And No Less Radical, And You Will Feel Better Too, I Guarantee, Once You Leave Hold Of The Doctrinaire And Allow Your Chainless Mind To Do Its Own Thinking.

How Ya Doin'?' I Always Think, What Kind Of A Question Is That?, And I Always Reply, 'a Bit Early To Tell.

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