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I Could Not Do What I Do, And Teach A Class, And Never Miss A Deadline, Never Be Late For Anything If I Was A Lush, Ok? I Would Really Love To Read A Piece That Said, 'he Is Not A Lush.' That Would Be Fabulous, It Would Be A First, I Could Show It To People And Say, 'look!'
-Christopher Hitchens
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I Could Not Do

Christopher Hitchens
I Could Not Do What I Do, And Teach A Class, And Never Miss A Deadline, Never Be Late For Anything If I Was A Lush, Ok? I Would Really Love To Read A Piece That Said, 'he Is Not A Lush.' That Would Be Fabulous, It Would Be A First, I Could Show It To People And Say, 'look!'
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Topic
Class
People
Missing
More From Christopher Hitchens
All Of Life Is A Wager
Wagers
Life Is
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
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 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
I Don't Think Souls Or Bodies Can Be Changed By Incantation. Or Anything Else By The Way.
Thinking
Soul
Body
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
I Could Not Possibly Improve On The Sentiment, But I Don't Think It Ought To Depend On The Current Austerities. Isn't Christmas A Moral And Aesthetic Nightmare Whether Or Not The Days Are Prosperous?
Christmas
Thinking
Austerity
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
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.
Essence
Relax
Able
There Is No English Surname, However Ancient And Dignified, That Cannot Instantly Be Improved By The Prefix ‘spanker’.
Ancient
Surnames
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.
Courage
Selfish
Science
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
[e]xceptional Claims Demand Exceptional Evidence.
Inspirational
Motivational
Atheist
Billy Graham Is A Boring, Racist Charlatan.
Religion
Racist
Boring
Writing Is What's Important To Me, And Anything That Helps Me Do That - Or Enhances And Prolongs And Deepens And Sometimes Intensifies Argument And Conversation - Is Worth It To Me. [it Is] Impossible For Me To Imagine Having My Life Without Going To Those Parties, Without Having Those Late Nights, Without That Second Bottle.
Party
Writing
Night
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?
War
Mean
Justice
I Don't Regard Myself As Any Kind Of Conservative, Except Conceivably Neo, And That Word, Of Course, Is A Ridiculous Appellation, Because It's Used To Describe A Group That Was Ready To Make War On The Status Quo, Which Is Not A Conservative Position.
War
Groups
Ridiculous
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
(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
Cancer Victimhood Contains A Permanent Temptation To Be Self-centred And Even Solipsistic.
Cancer
Self
Temptation
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
If Waterboarding Does Not Constitute Torture, Then There Is No Such Thing As Torture.
Doe
Torture
Ifs
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.
Writing
Talking
People
I Was Brought Up In A Very Naval, Military, And Conservative Background. My Father And His Friends Had Very Typical Opinions Of The British Middle Class - Lower-middle Class Actually - After The War. My Father Broke Into The Middle Class By Joining The Navy. I Was The First Member Of My Family Ever To Go To Private School Or Even To University. So, The Armed Forces Had Been Upward Mobility For Him.
Military
War
Father
People Until I Was 60 Would Always Say They Thought I Looked Younger, Which I Think, Without Flattering Myself, I Did, But I Think I Certainly Have, As George Orwell Says People Do After A Certain Age, The Face They Deserve.
Thinking
People
Age
"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
[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
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
What A Country, And What A Culture, When The Liberals Cry Before They Are Hurt, And The Reactionaries Pose As Brave Nonconformists, While The Radicals Make A Fetish Of Their Own Jokey Irrelevance.
Country
Hurt
Irrelevance
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
Quite Interesting, North Korea Is As If It's An Entirely Secular Dictatorship. In North Korea You Might Think That Was The Case Since It Has An Officially Communistic Ideology, But It's Not, It's The Most Religious State It's Possible To Imagine. It's Actually Two People Who Have Been Fused Into One, Maybe This Is Reminding You Of Something, There's The Father And There's The Son. It's One Short Of A Trinity.
Religious
Father
Son
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.
Prayer
Mean
Thinking
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
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
For Most Of My Life I Let Women Do The Driving And Was Happy To Let Them.
Driving
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
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
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.
Love
Beautiful
Zero
[even If The U.s. Doesn't Attack] Saddam Hussein Is Not Going To Survive. His Regime Is On The Verge Of Implosion.
Hussein
Regimes
Saddam
What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Be Dismissed Without Evidence.
Inspirational
Wisdom
Atheist
[religion] Attacks Us In Our Deepest Integrity - The Core Of Our Self-respect. Religion Says That We Would Not Know Right From Wrong, We Would Not Know An Evil, Wicked Act From A Decent Human Act Without Divine Permission, Without Divine Authority Or Without, Even Worse, Either The Fear Of A Divine Punishment Or The Hope Of A Divine Reward. It Strips Us Of The Right To Make Our Own Determination, As All Humans Always Have, About What Is And What Is Not A Right Human Action.
Determination
Integrity
Self
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
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
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
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
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
We Have No Proof That Socrates Ever Existed. We Only Know From Witnesses To His Life That He Did. Like Jesus, He Never Wrote Anything Down. It Doesn't Matter To Me Whether He Did Or Not Exist Because We Have His Teachings, His Method Of Thinking, And His Extreme Intellectual And Moral Courage.
Jesus
Teaching
Thinking
Only The Force Of American Arms, Or The Extremely Credible Threat Of That Force, Can Bring A Fresh Face To Power.
Arms
Faces
Force
To Be Against Rationalization Is Not The Same As To Be Opposed To Reasoning.
Reasoning
When I Went To Czechoslovakia Under The Old Communist Regime One Day In The '80s, I Thought To Myself Whatever I Do, Whatever Happens To Me In Prague I'm Not Going To Use The Name Kafka, I'm Just Not Going To Do It. I Won't Do It; It's So Easy, Everyone Else Does, I'm Not Going To. I'll Write The First Non-kafka Mentioning Piece.
Writing
Names
One Day
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.
Names
Relief
Speak
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
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
If Someone Tells Me That I've Hurt Their Feelings I'm Still Waiting To Hear What Your Point Is.
Atheist
Hurt
Waiting
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
It Was An Axiom Of "containment" That No Part Of The Known World Could Be Considered Neutral. "neutralism" Was Among The Cold Warriors' Gravest Curse Words, Applied With Caustic Hostility To India And Even France. Those Who Were Not With Were Against, Subjected To Intense Economic And Ideological And Sometimes Military Pressure To Fall Into Line.
Military
Fall
Warrior
One Of The Most Repellent Spectacles At Election Times Is The Pretense Of Piety On The Part Of People Running For Office.
Running
People
Office
George Bush Made A Mistake When He Referred To The Saddam Hussein Regime As 'evil.' Every Liberal And Leftist Knows How To Titter At Such Black-and-white Moral Absolutism.
Mistake
Black And White
Moral Absolutism
It's A Better Tradition For People Who Think For Themselves And Who Don't Pray In Aid Of Any Supernatural Authority. That's What You Should Be Spending Your Life Is In Spreading And Deepening That Tradition.
Thinking
People
Praying
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
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
It's True That Obscenity Is A Matter Of Taste And In The Eye Of The Beholder.
Eye
Matter
Taste
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
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
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.
Thinking
Dimensions
World
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
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
Redemption Is Promised At The Low Price Of Surrender Of Your Critical Faculties.
Religion
Redemption
Surrender
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
In A Public Dialogue With Salman In London He [edward Said] Had Once Described The Palestinian Plight As One Where His People, Expelled And Dispossessed By Jewish Victors, Were In The Unique Historical Position Of Being 'the Victims Of The Victims': There Was Something Quasi-christian, I Thought, In The Apparent Humility Of That Statement.
Christian
Atheist
Humility
There Is A Limit To The Success Of Conservative Populism And The Exploitation Of "little Guy" Or "silent Majority" Rhetoric, And It Is Very Often Reached Because Of The Emaciated, Corrupted Personalities Of The Demagogues Themselves.
Personality
Guy
Majority
There Are, After All, Atheists Who Say They Wish The Fable Were True But Are Unable To Suspend The Requisite Disbelief, Or Who Have Relinquished Belief Only With Regret. To This I Reply: Who Wishes That There Was A Permanent, Unalterable Celestial Despotism That Subjected Us To Continual Surveillance And Could Convict Us Of Thought-crime, And Who Regarded Us As Its Private Property Even After We Died? How Happy We Ought To Be, At The Reflection That There Exists Not A Shred Of Respectable Evidence To Support Such A Horrible Hypothesis.
Atheist
Regret
Reflection
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
It Is A Horrible Idea That There Is Somebody Who Owns Us, Who Makes Us, Who Supervises Us - Waking And Sleeping - Who Knows Our Thoughts, Who Can Convict Us Of Thought Crime, Thought Crime, Just For What We Think, Who Can Judge Us While We Sleep For Things That Might Occur To Us In Our Dreams, Who Can Create Us Sick, As Apparently We Are - And Then Order Us, On Pain Of Eternal Torture To Be Well Again. To Demand This, To Wish This To Be True Is To Wish To Live As An Abject Slave.
Dream
Pain
Sleep
The Penalty For Getting Mugged In An American City And Losing Your Id Is That You Can't Fly Home.
Home
Cities
Losing
We Owe A Huge Debt To Galileo For Emancipating Us All From The Stupid Belief In An Earth-centered Or Man-centered (let Alone God-centered) System. He Quite Literally Taught Us Our Place And Allowed Us To Go On To Make Extraordinary Advances In Knowledge.
Atheist
Stupid
Men
Authors Who Moan With Praise For Their Editors Always Seem To Reek Slightly Of The Stockholm Syndrome.
Writing
Editors
Praise
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 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.
Christian
Brother
Atheist
How Ya Doin'?' I Always Think, What Kind Of A Question Is That?, And I Always Reply, 'a Bit Early To Tell.
Thinking
Kind
Bits
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
Most Of The Utopian Community Ideas Actually Are Religious. They're Based More On The Idea Of The Monastery Than The Commune.
Religious
Ideas
Community
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
Reagan Is Doing To The Country What He Can No Longer Do To His Wife.
Country
Wife
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
In Modern Greek History, There Is A Close Relationship Between National Humiliation And Political Radicalization.
Political
Greek
Modern
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
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.
Lying
Thinking
Iraq
The Disquieting Thing About Newscaster-babble Or Editorial-speak Is Its Ready Availability As A Serf Idiom, A Vernacular Of Deference. "mr. Secretary, Are We Any Nearer To Bringing About A Dialogue In This Process ?
Availability
Speak
Process
What Do You Most Value In Your Friends? Their Continued Existence.
Inspiring
Friends
Existence
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
It Especially Annoys Me When Racists Are Accused Of 'discrimination.' The Ability To Discriminate Is A Precious Faculty; By Judging All Members On One 'race' To Be The Same, The Racist Precisely Shows Himself Incapable Of Discrimination.
Race
Judging
Racist
I Don't Think Consensus-building Politics Is What I'm Meant To Be Doing.
Thinking
Consensus Building
Meant To Be
Today I Want To Puke When I Hear The Word 'radical' Applied So Slothfully And Stupidly To Islamist Murderers; The Most Plainly Reactionary People In The World.
People
World
Want
When I Go To The Clinic Next And Sit With A Tube In My Arm And Watch The Poison Go In, I'm In An Attitude Of Abject Passivity. It Doesn't Feel Like Fighting At All; It Just Feels Like Submitting.
Attitude
Fighting
Poison
I Have More Than Once In My Time Woken Up Feeling Like Death.
Feelings
My Time
Human Decency Is Not Derived From Religion. It Precedes It.
Atheist
Religion
Atheism
I've Proved To Be As Difficult To Convert As I Am To Hypnotize.
Difficult
All The Time, I've Felt That Life Is A Wager And That I Probably Was Getting More Out Of Leading A Bohemian Existence As A Writer Than I Would Have If I Didn't.
Wagers
Life Is
Bohemian
The Stupider The Regime The More Intelligent The People Get And The More Humorous.
Humorous
Intelligent
People
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
Religion Attacks Us In Our Deepest Integrity By Saying We Wouldn't Be Able To Make A Moral Decision Without It.
Integrity
Decision
Able
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
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
The Koran Shows Every Sign Of Being Thrown Together By Human Beings, As Do All The Other Holy Books.
Book
Together
Holy
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
I Vote And I Do Jury Duty.
Vote
Duty
Jury Duty
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
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
Risk
Want
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
Only The Aspirants For President Are Fool Enough To Believe What They Read In The Newspapers.
Believe
President
Fool
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
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
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
The Human Wish To Credit Good Things As Miraculous And To Charge Bad Things To Another Account Is Apparently Universal.
Wish
Credit
Good Things
I Think Everybody Has Had The Experience At Some Point When They Feel That There's More To Life Than Just Matter. But I Think It's Very Important To Keep That Under Control And Not To Hand It Over To Be Exploited By Priests And Shamans And Rabbis And Other Riffraff.
Thinking
Hands
Important
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
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
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
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
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
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
Terrorism Is The Tactic Of Demanding The Impossible, And Demanding It At Gunpoint.
Tactics
Impossible
Terrorism
If The Qur'an Was The Word Of God, It Had Been Dictated On A Very Bad Day.
Bad Day
Islam
Word Of God
Religion Is Not Just Incongruent With Morality, But In Essential Ways Incompatible With It.
Essentials
Way
Morality
You Can Only Have One Aim Per Debate.
Debate
Aim
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
Skepticism Rather Than Credulity Is The Highest Principle That The Human Intellect Can Use To Ennoble Our Existence.
Religion
Use
Principles
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
If You Think That The Intifada In France Is About Housing, Go And Try Covering The Story Wearing A Yarmulka .
Thinking
Trying
Covering
The Postmodernists' Tyranny Wears People Down By Boredom And Semi-literate Prose.
People
Boredom
Tyranny
Teasing Is Very Often A Sign Of Inner Misery.
Misery
Tease
If You Gave [jerry] Falwell An Enema He Could Be Buried In A Matchbox.
Atheist
Religion
Buried
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.
Christian
Fall
Interesting
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 Visiting Today's Iran, I Was Delighted To Find That Citizens Made A Point Of Defying The Clerical Ban On Booze, Keeping It In Their Homes For Visitors Even If They Didn't Particularly Take To It Themselves, And Bootlegging It With Great Brio And Ingenuity. These Small Revolutions Affirm The Human.
Inspiration
Reading
Home
It's Not At All Good When Your Cancer Is 'palpable' From The Outside. Especially When, As At This Stage, They Didn't Even Know Where The Primary Source Was. Carcinoma Works Cunningly From The Inside Out. Detection And Treatment Often Work More Slowly And Gropingly, From The Outside In.
Cancer
Treatment
Stage
Virtue And Merit Can Become Their Opposites If They Are Exacted Or Compelled.
Opposites
Merit
Virtue
The Secular State Is The Guarantee Of Religious Pluralism. This Apparent Paradox, Again, Is The Simplest And Most Elegant Of Political Truths.
Religious
Pluralism Is
Political
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.
Believe
White
People
I Could Be Spending Time Looking Through A Telescope Or Into A Microscope And Finding Out The Most Extraordinary, Wonderful Things, But People Say Faith Can Move Mountains. Faith In What, By The Way? You Haven't Said.
Moving
People
Mountain
Religion Fosters Servility And Solipsism.
Religion
Atheism
Solipsism
There Either Is A God Or There Is Not; There Is A 'design' Or Not.
Atheist
Design
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
I Have Tried For Much Of My Life To Write As If I Was Composing My Sentences To Be Read Posthumously.
Writing
Composing
Sentences
I Say That Homosexuality Is Not Just A Form Of Sex, It's A Form Of Love, And It Deserves Our Respect For That Reason.
Sex
Lgbt
Gay Pride
No Child's Behind Left.
Children
Religion
Behinds
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
To What Faults Do You Feel Most Indulgent? To The Ones That Arise From Urgent Material Needs.
Needs
Faults
Materialism
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
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
The Reading Public Isn't Born That Doesn't Think Foreigners Are Either Funny Or Faintly Sinister.
Reading
Thinking
Born
With Modern American Dentistry It Is Simply Amazing To See What Transformation Can Be Wrought In A Single Day.
Transformation
Modern
Dentistry
I Am Absolutely Convinced That Religion Is The Main Source Of Hatred In This World.
Hatred
Religion
Atheism
It's Often A Bad Sign When People Defend Themselves Against Charges Which Haven't Been Made.
People
Made
Havens
A Rule Of Thumb With Humor; If You Worry That You Might Be Going Too Far, You Have Already Not Gone Far Enough. If Everybody Laughs, You Have Failed.
Laughing
Worry
Gone
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 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
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
[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.
Sorry
Iraq
Bosnia
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
Nothing Optional -- From Homosexuality To Adultery -- Is Ever Made Punishable Unless Those Who Do The Prohibiting (and Exact The Fierce Punishment) Have A Repressed Desire To Participate.
Punishment
Desire
Fierce
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
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.
Strong
Healthy
Might
Religion Is Compulsory In English Schools, You Know.
School
Knows
Compulsory
It Ought To Be An Offense To Be Excruciating And Unfunny In Circumstances Where Your Audience Is Almost Morally Obliged To Enthuse.
Cancer
Circumstances
Offense
I Leave It To The Faithful To Burn Each Other's Churches And Mosques And Synagogues, Which They Can Be Always Relied Upon To Do
Faithful
Church
Mosques
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
People Know When They Are Being Lied To, They Know When Their Rulers Are Absurd, They Know They Do Not Love Their Chains.
People
Being Lied
Absurd
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.
Land
Yugoslavia
Names
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
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
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
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
To Be In Opposition Is Not To Be A Nihilist.
Nihilist
Opposition
All This Could Be Part Of A Plan. There Is No Way An Atheist Can Prove It’s Not. But It’s Some Plan, Isn't It? With Mass Destruction, Pitiless Extermination, Annihilation Going On All The Time. And All Of This Set In Motion On A Scale That’s Absolutely Beyond Our Imagination, In Order That The Pope Can Tell People Not To Jerk Off.
Atheist
Mass Destruction
Order
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
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.
Government
Views
Gentleman
The People Who Tend To Raise Antiwar Slogans Will Do So Generally When It's American Or British Interests Involved.
People
British
Interest
Exercise Is A Pastime Only For Those Who Are Already Slender And Physically Fit. It Just Isn't So Much Fun When You Have A Marked Tendency To Wheeze And Throw Up, And A Cannonball Of A Belly Sloshing Around Inside The Baggy Garments.
Fun
Exercise
Fit
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
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.
Atheist
Stupid
Selfish
When I Abandoned The Smoking Habit Of More Than Three Decades I Was Given A Supposedly Helpful Pill Called Wellbutrin. But As Soon As I Discovered That This Was The Brand Name For An Antidepressant, I Tossed The Bottle Away. There May Be Successful Methods For Overcoming The Blues But For Me They Cannot Include A Capsule That Says: 'fool Yourself Into Happiness, While Pretending Not To Do So.' I Should Actually Want My Mind To Be Strong Enough To Circumvent Such A Trick.
Strong
Successful
Names
The Moment Of Near Despair Is Quite Often The Moment That Precedes Courage.
Despair
Moments
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
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
It's Called Faith Because It's Not Knowledge.
As I've Said Before, You Can Be An Atheist And Anything You Like.
Atheist
Said
The Realization That American Power Could And Should Be Used For The Defense Of Pluralism And As A Punishment For Fascism Came To Me In Sarajevo A Year Or Two Later... That Was An Early Quarrel Between Me And Many Of My Nation Colleagues, And It Was Also The First Time I Found Myself In The Same Trench As People Like Paul Wolfowitz And Jeane Kirkpatrick: A Shock I Had To Learn To Get Over. 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
We Become Accomplices In Evil Every Time We Seek To Soothe The Unslakable Appetites Of The Crime Family That Sits In Pyongyang.
Evil
Politics
Crime
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
There Are Also People Who Say It's God's Curse On Me That I Should Have It Near My Throat Because That Was The Organ Of Blasphemy Which I Used For So Many Years. I've Used Many Other Organs To Blaspheme As Well If It Comes To That.
Atheist
Should Have
Years
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 Don't Want Them (religious Followers) Trying To Inflict Their Belief On Me.
Religious
Atheism
Trying
We Live Only A Few Conscious Decades, And We Fret Ourselves Enough For Several Lifetimes.
Anxiety
Lifetime
Enough
A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory. Kissinger Is A Stupendous Liar With A Remarkable Memory.
Memories
Liars
Remarkable
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
No School Of Philosophy Has Ever Solved This Question Of Whether Being Determines Consciousness Or The Other Way Around. It May Be A False Antithesis.
Philosophy
School
May
Ronald Reagan Used To Alarm His Soviet Counterparts By Saying That Surely They'd Both Unite Against An Invasion From Mars.
Alarms
Mars
Invasion
I Can't Find The Compulsory Mutilation Of The Genitals Of Children A Subject For Humor... It's Designed To Repress Sexual Pleasure... The Full Excision, Not Just The Snip But The Full Mandatory Covenant Is Fantastically Painful, Leads To Trauma, Leads To The Dulling Of The Sexual Relationship. And Can Be, In Itself Life-threatening At That Moment. We Have Records, I Can Show Them To You, Of Hundreds And Hundreds And Hundreds In The United States Of Boy Babies Who Died Or Had Life-threatening Infections As A Result Of This Disgusting Practice.
Baby
Atheist
Children
I Could Not Do What I Do, And Teach A Class, And Never Miss A Deadline, Never Be Late For Anything If I Was A Lush, Ok? I Would Really Love To Read A Piece That Said, 'he Is Not A Lush.' That Would Be Fabulous, It Would Be A First, I Could Show It To People And Say, 'look!'
Class
People
Missing
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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