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I Don't Think Romney Is Wacky At All, But Religion Makes Intelligent People Say And Do Wacky Things, Believe And Affirm Crazy Things. Left On His Own, Romney Would Never Have Said Something Like The Garden Of Eden Was In Missouri, And Will Be Again.
-Christopher Hitchens
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I Don't Think Romney

Christopher Hitchens
I Don't Think Romney Is Wacky At All, But Religion Makes Intelligent People Say And Do Wacky Things, Believe And Affirm Crazy Things. Left On His Own, Romney Would Never Have Said Something Like The Garden Of Eden Was In Missouri, And Will Be Again.
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Topic
Crazy
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Garden
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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.
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What Do You Most Value In Your Friends? Their Continued Existence.
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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.
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"objective" Means That, In A Confrontation With The Evidence, You Would Be Willing To Change Your Own Mind.
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War
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Thinking
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Lying
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Thinking
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.
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Uganda
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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
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I Wrote A Piece From North Korea Called Visit To A Small Planet Which Is A Line I Stole From A Play Of Gore Vidal's, Because It Did Seem To Me As If I Had Left This Planet Completely To Go On This Visit To The Northern Part Of The Korean Peninsula, And It Was As If Coming Back From Another Spatial Body Altogether.
Korea
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History
Morality
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Punishment
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Fierce
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Editors
Stuff
Publishers
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Religion Makes Intelligent People Say And Do Wacky Things, Believe And Affirm Crazy Things.
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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.
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Normal
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Heaven
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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.
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I Burned The Candle At Both Ends And It Often Gave A Lovely Light.
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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.
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If I Convert It's Because It's Better That A Believer Dies Than That An Atheist Does.
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Order
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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
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Absolute Certainty
Certainty
Absolutes
Exceptional Claims, Require Exceptional Evidence.
Claims
Evidence
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[p]erhaps You Notice How The Denial Is So Often The Preface To The Justification.
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Reading
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(howard) Dean Is A Raving Nut Bag...a Raving, Sinister, Demagogic Nutbag...i And A Few Other People Saw That He Should Be Destroyed.
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People
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The Finest Fury Is The Most Controlled.
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Endless Praise And Adoration, Limitless Abnegation And Abjection Of Self; A Celestial North Korea.
Self
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Abjection
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The Mildest Criticism Of Religion Is Also The Most Radical And The Most Devastating One. Religion Is Man-made.
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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.
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Thinking
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If You Can Charm Everyone It Means You Don't Care About Anyone In Particular.
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A Bit Of A Stomach Give A Chap A Position In Society.
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Sick
Never Ask While You Are Doing It If What You Are Doing Is Fun. Don't Introduce Even Your Most Reliably Witty Acquaintance As Someone Who Will Set The Table On A Roar.
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Fun
Tables
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.
Atheist
Feel Better
Thinking
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Light
Giving
Lovely
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Believe
White
People
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Religious
Views
People
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Want
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Sick
Lines
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Wagers
Life Is
Bohemian
A Gentleman Is Never Rude Except On Purpose - I Can Honestly Be Nasty Sober, Believe You Me.
Believe
Rude
Gentleman
In One Was, 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. But For Precisely This Reason, I Can't See Myself Smiting My Brow With Shock Or Hear Myself Whining About How It's All So Unfair: I Have Been Taunting The Reaper Into Taking A Free Scythe In My Direction And Have Now Succumbed To Something So Predictable And Banal That It Bores Even Me.
Light
Giving
Lovely
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
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Refuge
Consensus
Security
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Order
Trying
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Branches
Action
Tough
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Memories
Liars
Remarkable
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Religious
Blessed
America
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Home
Cities
Losing
With Modern American Dentistry It Is Simply Amazing To See What Transformation Can Be Wrought In A Single Day.
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Troops
Bombs
Movement
Billy Graham Is A Boring, Racist Charlatan.
Religion
Racist
Boring
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
What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Be Dismissed Without Evidence.
Inspirational
Wisdom
Atheist
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
I Have Decided To Take Whatever My Disease Can Throw At Me.
Disease
Decided
Beautiful Sentences Pop Into My Head. Beautiful Sentences That Aren't Always Absolutely Accurate. Then, I Have To Choose Between The Beautiful Sentence And Being Absolutely Accurate. It Can Be A Difficult Choice.
Beautiful
Difficult Choices
Pops
Don't Swallow Your Moral Code In Tablet Form.
Tablets
Moral
Form
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Party
Two
Iraq
I Think I Write In A Fairly Self-confident Manner.
Writing
Thinking
Self
The Press Is Still Investing Itself, It Seems To Me, In A Sort Of Cynicism. It Comes Out Better For Them If They Can Predict Hard Times, Bogging Down, Sniping, Attrition.
Hard Times
Sniping
Investing
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
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
People Who Think With Their Epidermis Or Their Genitalia Or Their Clan Are The Problem To Begin With. One Does Not Banish This Specter By Invoking It. If I Would Not Vote Against Someone On The Grounds Of 'race' Or 'gender' Alone, Then By The Exact Same Token I Would Not Cast A Vote In His Or Her Favor For The Identical Reason. Yet See How This Obvious Question Makes Fairly Intelligent People Say The Most Alarmingly Stupid Things.
Stupid
Intelligent
Thinking
Benito Mussolini Had Barely Seized Power In Italy Before The Vatican Made An Official Treaty With Him, Known As The Lateran Pact Of 1929. Under The Terms Of This Deal, Catholicism Became The Only Recognized Religion In Italy, With Monopoly Powers Over Matters Such As Birth, Marriage, Death, And Education, And In Return Urged Its Followers To Vote For Mussolini's Party. Pope Pius Xi Described Ii Duce (“the Leader”) As “a Man Sent By Providence.”
Party
Men
Europe
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
The One Unforgivable Sin Is To Be Boring.
Unforgivable Sin
Sin
Boring
Only The Force Of American Arms, Or The Extremely Credible Threat Of That Force, Can Bring A Fresh Face To Power.
Arms
Faces
Force
The Quality You Most Admire In A Woman? Courage Moral And Physical: "anima"-the Ability To Visualize The Mind And Need Of A Man. Also A Sense Of The Absurd.
Men
Empathy
Mind
At Oxford One Was Positively Encouraged To Take Wine During Tutorials. The Tongue Must Be Untied.
Wine
Oxford
Tutorial
Religion Attacks Us In Our Deepest Integrity By Saying We Wouldn't Be Able To Make A Moral Decision Without It.
Integrity
Decision
Able
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 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
The Beauty Of Science Hugely Outranks The Charms Of Superstition.
Superstitions
Charm
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
What Better Way For A Ruling Class To Claim And Hold Power Than To Pose As The Defenders Of The Nation.
Class
Way
Claims
Owners Of Dogs Will Have Noticed That, If You Provide Them With Food And Water And Shelter And Affection, They Will Think You Are God. Whereas Owners Of Cats Are Compelled To Realize That, If You Provide Them With Food And Water And Affection, They Draw The Conclusion That They Are God.
Inspirational
Dog
Cat
Chemotherapy Isn't Good For You. So When You Feel Bad, As I Am Feeling Now, You Think, 'well That Is A Good Thing Because It's Supposed To Be Poison. If It's Making The Tumor Feel This Queasy, Then I'm Ok With It.'
Thinking
Feelings
Poison
There Is No English Surname, However Ancient And Dignified, That Cannot Instantly Be Improved By The Prefix ‘spanker’.
Ancient
Surnames
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
The Only Position That Leaves Me With No Cognitive Dissonance Is Atheism.
Atheist
Atheism
Cognitive Dissonance
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
Principles Have A Way Of Enduring, As Do The Few Irreducible Individuals Who Maintain Allegiance To Them.
Principles
Way
Individual
Unless A Reincarnationist Is Willing To Say There Was A 'first Generation' Of Souls Created With The First Humans, He Is Exposed To Absurdity By The Recency Of Human Life On The Planet.
Soul
Generations
Firsts
I Think The Cultural Task Is To Separate Our Impulses And Needs And Desires From The Supernatural And, Above All, From The Superstitious.
Thinking
Desire
Tasks
I Can’t Hope To Convey The Full Effect Of The Embraces And Avowals, But I Can Perhaps Offer A Crumb Of Counsel. If There Is Anybody Known To You Who Might Benefit From A Letter Or A Visit, Do Not On Any Account Postpone The Writing Or The Making Of It. The Difference Made Will Almost Certainly Be More Than You Have Calculated
Writing
Differences
Benefits
Everyone In Iran Is Perceived To Be A Child With A Paternal Authority Vested In The Guardian Council And The Sufi Elders. They're Supposed To Be Grateful. They Can Never For A Moment Not Be Afforded This Wonderful Protection. The Father Who Will Never Go Away. The Father Who Will Never Quit Caring For Them.
Children
Father
Grateful
Perhaps The Values Of Socialists Can Only Be Realized By Socialists In A Nonsocialist Society.
Values
What I Used To Say To People, When I Was Much More Engagé Myself, Is That You Can't Be Apolitical. It Will Come And Get You. It's Not That You Shouldn't Be Neutral. It's That You Won't Be Able To Stay Neutral.
People
Able
Used
We Have Known For A Long Time That Prince Charles' Empty Sails Are So Rigged As To Be Swelled By Any Passing Waft Or Breeze Of Crankiness And Cant. He Fell For The Fake Anthropologist Laurens Van Der Post. He Was Bowled Over By The Charms Of Homeopathic Medicine. He Has Been Believably Reported As Saying That Plants Do Better If You Talk To Them In A Soothing And Encouraging Way
Stupid
Medicine
Long
Arguments That Explain Everything... Explain Nothing
Argument
Even If I Accepted That Jesus - Like Almost Every Other Prophet On Record - Was Born Of A Virgin, I Cannot Think That This Proves The Divinity Of His Father Or The Truth Of His Teachings. The Same Would Be True If I Accepted That He Had Been Resurrected.
Jesus
Father
Teaching
The (catholic) Church, As Far As I Know, Has Not Endorsed Any War As Just Since It Supported General Franco's Invasion Of Spain To Destroy The Spanish Republic With A Muslim Mercenary Army In The Thirties, On The Side Of Hitler.
War
Army
Catholic
I Used To Wish There Was A Useful Term For Those Of Us Who Thought American Power Should Be Used To Remove Psychopathic Dictators.
Wish
Dictator
Used
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
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
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.
Philosophy
Believe
Healing
I'd Like To Prove To Other People That It's Not The End Of Everything To Be Diagnosed With Cancer.
Cancer
People
Ends
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
Even With All The Advantages Of Retrospect, And A Lot Of Witnesses Dead And Gone, You Can't Make Your Life Look As If You Intended It Or You Were Consistent. All You Can Show Is How You Dealt With Various Hands.
Hands
Looks
Gone
Your Favorite Virtue? An Appreciation For Irony.
Appreciation
Irony
Virtue
Talking, It Seemed To Me, Was The Point Of Adult Existence.
Talking
Adults
Existence
Millions Of People Die Every Day. Everyone's Got To Go Sometime. I've Came By This Particular Tumor Honestly. If You Smoke, Which I Did For Many Years Very Heavily With Occasional Interruption, And If You Use Alcohol, You Make Yourself A Candidate For It In Your Sixties.
Years
People
Alcohol
There Is No Such Thing As Closure, And It Wouldn't Be Worth Having If It Were Available, Because All It Would Mean Is That Something That Was Quite An Important Part Of You Had Gone Numb.
Mean
Important
Gone
It’s Considered Perfectly Normal In This Society To Approach Dying People Who You Don’t Know But Who Are Unbelievers And Say, ‘now Are You Gonna Change Your Mind?’ That Is Considered Almost A Polite Question.
Perfectly Normal
People
Mind
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
Did We Not Aid The Grisly Taliban To Achieve And Hold Power? Yes Indeed 'we' Did. Well, Does That Not Double Or Triple Our Responsibility To Remove Them From Power?
Responsibility
Doe
Achieve
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
If Someone Tells Me That I've Hurt Their Feelings I'm Still Waiting To Hear What Your Point Is.
Atheist
Hurt
Waiting
Whenever I Hear Some Bigmouth In Washington Or The Christian Heartland Banging On About The Evils Of Sodomy Or Whatever, I Mentally Enter His Name In My Notebook And Contentedly Set My Watch. Sooner Rather Than Later, He Will Be Discovered Down On His Weary And Well-worn Old Knees In Some Dreary Motel Or Latrine, With An Expired Visa Card, Having Tried To Pay Well Over The Odds To Be Peed Upon By Some Apache Transvestite.
Notebook
Christian
Names
Avoid Stock Expressions (like The Plague, As William Safire Used To Say) And Repetitions. Don't Say That As A Boy Your Grandmother Used To Read To You, Unless At That Stage Of Her Life She Really Was A Boy, In Which Case You Have Probably Thrown Away A Better Intro. If Something Is Worth Hearing Or Listening To, It's Very Probably Worth Reading. So, This Above All: Find Your Own Voice.
Reading
Grandmother
Boys
Religion Gets Its Morality From Us. We Don't Get Our Morality From Religion.
Religion
Morality
Thanks To The Telescope And The Microscope, Religion No Longer Offers An Explanation For Anything Important.
Religion
Atheism
Important
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.
Country
America
Progress
Religion Is Man-made. Even The Men Who Made It Cannot Agree On What Their Prophets Or Redeemers Or Gurus Actually Said Or Did.
Men
He Man
Guru
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
Evolution Has Meant That Our Prefrontal Lobes Are Too Small, Our Adrenal Glands Are Too Big, And Our Reproductive Organs Apparently Designed By Committee; A Recipe Which, Alone Or In Combination, Is Very Certain To Lead To Some Unhappiness And Disorder.
Adrenal Glands
Recipes
Evolution
I Suppose That One Reason I Have Always Detested Religion Is Its Sly Tendency To Insinuate The Idea That The Universe Is Designed With 'you' In Mind Or, Even Worse, That There Is A Divine Plan Into Which One Fits Whether One Knows It Or Not. This Kind Of Modesty Is Too Arrogant For Me.
Atheist
Ideas
Mind
We Are Unlikely To Cease Making Gods Or Inventing Ceremonies To Please Them For As Long As We Are Afraid Of Death, Or Of The Dark, And For As Long As We ­persist In Self-­centeredness. That Could Be A Lengthy Stretch Of Time.
Dark
Self
Long
As I've Said Before, You Can Be An Atheist And Anything You Like.
Atheist
Said
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
I'm Terrified Of Losing My Voice.
Voice
Losing
Terrified
My Own View Is That This Planet Is Used As A Penal Colony, Lunatic Asylum And Dumping Ground By A Superior Civilisation, To Get Rid Of The Undesirable And Unfit. I Can't Prove It, But You Can't Disprove It Either.
Views
Lunatic Asylums
Planets
The Moment Of Near Despair Is Quite Often The Moment That Precedes Courage.
Despair
Moments
Here We Are Then, I Was Thinking, In A War To The Finish Between Everything I Love And Everything I Hate. Fine. We Will Win And They Will Lose. A Pity That We Let Them Pick The Time And Place Of The Challenge, But We Can And We Will Make Up For That.
Hate
War
Winning
In Order To Terminate A Pregnancy, You Have To Still A Heartbeat, Switch Off A Developing Brain.
Pregnancy
Order
Abortion
North Korea Is A Necrocracy, Or A Mauselocracy Or A Thanatocracy In Which The One [kim Il-sung] Is Diffused Into Being With The Other [kim Jong Il], And Where Both Of Them Are Said To Have Had Miraculous Births Attended By Miraculous Phenomena Such As, For Example, Birds Singing In Korean, When They Were Born.
Korea
Bird
Singing
Faith Is The Surrender Of The Mind; It's The Surrender Of Reason, It's The Surrender Of The Only Thing That Makes Us Different From Other Mammals. It's Our Need To Believe, And To Surrender Our Skepticism And Our Reason, Our Yearning To Discard That And Put All Our Trust Or Faith In Someone Or Something, That Is The Sinister Thing To Me. Of All The Supposed Virtues, Faith Must Be The Most Overrated.
Atheist
Believe
Animal
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
Some People Say That Without God, People Would Give Themselves Permission To Do Anything. [yet] Only With God, Only With The View That God's On Your Side, Can People Give Themselves Permission To Do Things That Otherwise Would Be Called Satanic.
Views
Your Side
People
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.
Believe
Awards
Eyebrows
Religion Is Not The Belief There Is A God. Religion Is The Belief God Tells You What To Do.
Belief
No Child's Behind Left.
Children
Religion
Behinds
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
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
Of Course We Have Free Will Because We Have No Choice But To Have It.
Choices
Free Will
Courses
Virtue And Merit Can Become Their Opposites If They Are Exacted Or Compelled.
Opposites
Merit
Virtue
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
There Either Is A God Or There Is Not; There Is A 'design' Or Not.
Atheist
Design
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
It's A Big Mistake To Think That Your Own Cause, Or Your Own Country, Or Your Own Side Has God In Its Corner. For One Thing, It Commits The Sin Of Pride.
Country
Mistake
Pride
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
Urging Humans To Be Superhumans, On Pain Of Death And Torture, Is The Urging Of Terrible Self-abasement At Their Repeated And Inevitable Failure To Keep The Rules.
Atheist
Pain
Self
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
No One Has The Right To Tell Me What To Do Because He Has A Divine Warrant.
Religion
Divine
Warrants
Name A Moral Statement Or Action, Uttered Or Performed By A Religious Person That Could Not Have Been Uttered Or Performed By An Unbeliever.
Religious
Names
Action
I Don't Think Souls Or Bodies Can Be Changed By Incantation. Or Anything Else By The Way.
Thinking
Soul
Body
Take The Risk Of Thinking For Yourself. Much More Happiness, Truth, Beauty And Wisdom Will Come To You That Way.
Thinking
Texas
Risk
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
I Think The Materialist Conception Of History Is Valid.
Thinking
Conception
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?
Atheist
Godly
Men
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
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.
Atheist
Men
Atheism
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
The Violence In The Bible Is Appalling.
Violence
In One Way, Traveling Has Narrowed My Mind. What I Have Discovered Is Something Very Ordinary And Unexciting, Which Is That Humans Are The Same Everywhere And That The Degree Of Variation Between Members Of Our Species Is Very Slight. This Is Of Course An Encouraging Finding; It Helps Arm You Against News Programs Back Home That Show Seething Or Abject Masses Of Either Fanatical Or Torpid People. In Another Way It Is A Depressing Finding; The Sorts Of Things That Make People Quarrel And Make Them Stupid Are The Same Everywhere.
Depressing
Stupid
Home
In My Life, The Only Certainty Is To Be Uncertain. I'm An Unbeliever Who Believes In Skepticism. I'm Only Sure About Being Unsure.
Believe
Uncertain
Skepticism
The Concept Of Loneliness And Exile And Self-sufficiency Continually Bucks Me Up.
Loneliness
Self
Bucks
Nothing Could Make Me Forget What The Reagan Years Had Actually Been Like.
Years
Forget
Those Of Us Who Are Most Genuinely Repelled By War And Violence Are Also Those Who Are Most Likely To Decide That Some Things, After All, Are Worth Fighting For.
War
Fighting
Violence
I Have Been Taunting The Reaper Into Taking A Free Scythe In My Direction And Have Now Succumbed To Something So Predictable And Banal That It Bores Even Me.
Scythes
Reaper
Bores
Henry Kissinger Should Have The Door Shut In His Face By Every Decent Person And Should Be Shamed, Ostracized And Excluded.
Doors
Should Have
Faces
Ronald Reagan Used To Alarm His Soviet Counterparts By Saying That Surely They'd Both Unite Against An Invasion From Mars.
Alarms
Mars
Invasion
Europeans Think Americans Are Fat, Vulgar, Greedy, Stupid, Ambitious And Ignorant And So On. And They've Taken As Their Own, As Their Representative American Someone Who Actually Embodies All Of Those Qualities.
Stupid
Taken
Thinking
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
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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