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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.

-Christopher Hitchens

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In A Public Dialogue

Christopher Hitchens

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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.

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I Have Decided To Take Whatever My Disease Can Throw At Me.

My Children, To The Extent That They Have Found Religion, Have Found It From Me, In That I Insist On At Least A Modicum Of Religious Education For Them.

I Try To Deny Myself Any Illusions Or Delusions, And I Think That This Perhaps Entitles Me To Try And Deny The Same To Others, At Least As Long As They Refuse To Keep Their Fantasies To Themselves.

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.

The Concept Of Loneliness And Exile And Self-sufficiency Continually Bucks Me Up.

It Is Only Those Who Hope To Transform Human Beings Who End Up By Burning Them, Like The Waste Product Of A Failed Experiment.

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

If You Gave [jerry] Falwell An Enema He Could Be Buried In A Matchbox.

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

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

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.

To Terrify Children With The Image Of Hell, To Consider Women An Inferior Creation - Is That Good For The World?

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

It's True That Obscenity Is A Matter Of Taste And In The Eye Of The Beholder.

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

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

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.

Trust Is Not The Same As Faith. A Friend Is Someone You Trust. Putting Faith In Anyone Is A Mistake.

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.

Ronald Reagan Used To Alarm His Soviet Counterparts By Saying That Surely They'd Both Unite Against An Invasion From Mars.

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.

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

Well, To The People Who Pray For Me To Not Only Have An Agonising Death, But Then Be Reborn To Have An Agonising And Horrible Eternal Life Of Torture, I Say, 'well, Good On You. See You There.'

For The People Who Ostensibly Wish Me Well Or Are Worried About My Immortal Soul, I Say I Take It Kindly.

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.

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.

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.

Talking, It Seemed To Me, Was The Point Of Adult Existence.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

What Do You Most Value In Your Friends? Their Continued Existence.

Martin Is Your Best Friend, Isn't He?' A Sweet And Well-intentioned Girl Once Said When Both Of Us Were Present: It Was The Only Time I Ever Felt Awkward About This Precious Idea, Which Seemed Somehow To Risk Diminishment If It Were Uttered Aloud.

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

The Best Blended Scotch In The History Of The World - Which Was Also The Favourite Drink Of The Iraqi Baath Party, As It Still Is Of The Palestinian Authority And The Libyan Dictatorship And Large Branches Of The Saudi Arabian Royal Family - Is Johnnie Walker Black. Breakfast Of Champions, Accept No Substitute.

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.

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?

I Have Often Thought That When I Do Die It Will Be Of Sheer Boredom.

A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory.

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

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

The Only Position That Leaves Me With No Cognitive Dissonance Is Atheism.

Cognitive Dissonance

Henry Kissinger Should Have The Door Shut In His Face By Every Decent Person And Should Be Shamed, Ostracized And Excluded.

Religion Fosters Servility And Solipsism.

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.

A Good Day Is One Where I Can Not Just Read A Book, But Write A Review Of It. Maybe Today I'll Be Able To Do That. I Get For Some Reason Somewhat Stronger When The Sun Starts To Go Down. Dusk Is A Good Time For Me. I'm Crepuscular.

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

If You Look At Any Muslim Society And You Make A Scale Of How Developed They Are, And How Successful The Economy Is, It's A Straight Line. It Depends On How Much They Emancipate Their Women.

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

I'm Terrified Of Losing My Voice.

Perhaps The Values Of Socialists Can Only Be Realized By Socialists In A Nonsocialist Society.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Chief Consolation In This Year Of Living Dyingly Has Been The Presence Of Friends.

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

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.

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.

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.

By Trying To Adjust To The Findings That It Once Tried So Viciously To Ban And Repress, Religion Has Only Succeeded In Restating The Same Questions That Undermined It In Earlier Epochs. What Kind Of Designer Or Creator Is So Wasteful And Capricious And Approximate? What Kind Of Designer Or Creator Is So Cruel And Indifferent? And - Most Of All - What Kind Of Designer Or Creator Only Chooses To "reveal" Himself To Semi-stupefied Peasants In Desert Regions?

Atheists Have Always Argued That This World Is All That We Have, And That Our Duty Is To One Another To Make The Very Most And Best Of It.

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!'

This Walking Business Is Overrated: I Mastered The Art Of Doing It When I Was Quite Small, And In Any Case, What Are Taxis For?

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.

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.

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.

There Either Is A God Or There Is Not; There Is A 'design' Or Not.

The Noble Title Of "dissident" Must Be Earned Rather Than Claimed; It Connotes Sacrifice And Risk Rather Than Mere Disagreement.

[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.

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

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.

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.

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

We Know That Our Life Is Essentially Tragic. I'm Absolutely Not For Handing Over That Very Important Department Of Our Psyche To Those Who Say, "why Didn't You Say So Before? God Has A Plan For You In Mind."

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.

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

There Are Many, Many Discrepant Views Within The Shia Theology About What's The Proper Role Of Religion In Society Or In The State, Should It Rule Now, Should It Claim To Govern People In The Here And Now, Or Should It Wait Until The Messiah, The 12th Imam, Comes Back And Would It Only Be Then Appropriate For Religious Rule To Bring About A World Of Universal Justice And Vindication.

Chomsky Proceeds On The Almost Unthinkably Subversive Assumption That The United States Should Be Judged By The Same Standards That It Preaches (often At Gunpoint) To Other Nations He Is Nearly The Only Person Now Writing Who Assumes A Single Standard Of International Morality Not For Rhetorical Effect, But As A Matter Of Habitual, Practically Instinctual Conviction.

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.

Only The Force Of American Arms, Or The Extremely Credible Threat Of That Force, Can Bring A Fresh Face To Power.

For A Lot Of People, Their First Love Is What They'll Always Remember. For Me It's Always Been The First Hate, And I Think That Hatred, Though It Provides Often Rather Junky Energy, Is A Terrific Way Of Getting You Out Of Bed In The Morning And Keeping You Going.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

To 'choose' Dogma And Faith Over Doubt And Experience Is To Throw Out The Ripening Vintage And To Reach Greedily For The Kool-aid.

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

We Live Only A Few Conscious Decades, And We Fret Ourselves Enough For Several Lifetimes.

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.

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

The Transformation Of Part Of The Northern Part Of This Continent Into "america" Inaugurated A Nearly Boundless Epoch Of Opportunity And Innovation, And Thus Deserves To Be Celebrated With Great Vim And Gusto, With Or Without The Participation Of Those Who Wish They Had Never Been Born.

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.

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.

Of Course, I Do Everything For Money.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Worst Days Are When You Feel Foggy In The Head - Chemo-brain They Call It. It's Awful Because You Feel Boring. As Well As Bored. And Stupid. And Resigned.

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

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.

Lunatic Asylums

[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.

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

The Enormous Dynamic And Creative, As Well As Destructive Energy Of Capitalism... Is Written Up With More Praise And More Respect By Marx And Engels In The 1848 Communist Manifesto Than Probably By Anyone Since. I Don't Think Anyone Has Ever Said So Precisely And With Such Awed Admiration How Great Capitalism Is, How Inventive, How Innovative, How Dynamic, How Much Force Of Creativity It Unleashes.

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

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.

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.

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

Doubt, Skepticism, Innovation, And Inquiry Are The Only Means By Which Wonder, Beauty, Awe, And Symmetry Will Be Discovered.

I Used To Wish There Was A Useful Term For Those Of Us Who Thought American Power Should Be Used To Remove Psychopathic Dictators.

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.

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.

I Have Nowhere Claimed Nor Even Implied That Unbelief Is A Guarantee Of Good Conduct Or Even An Indicator Of It.

I Am Absolutely Convinced That Religion Is The Main Source Of Hatred In This World.

All Of Life Is A Wager

Human Decency Is Not Derived From Religion. It Precedes It.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Polls Undoubtedly Help To Decide What People Think, But Their Most Important Long-term Influence May Be On How People Think. The Interrogative Process Is Very Distinctly Weighted Against The Asking Of An Intelligent Question Or The Recording Of A Thoughtful Answer.

The Violence In The Bible Is Appalling.

In An Average Day, You May Well Be Confronted With Some Species Of Bullying Or Bigotry, Or Some Ill-phrased Appeal To The General Will, Or Some Petty Abuse Of Authority. If You Have A Political Loyalty, You May Be Offered A Shady Reason For Agreeing To A Lie Or A Half-truth That Serves Some Short-term Purpose. Everybody Devises Tactics For Getting Through Such Moments; Try Behaving "as If" They Need Not Be Tolerated And Are Not Inevitable.

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

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.

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

Allow A Friend To Believe In A Bogus Prospectus Or A False Promise And You Cease, After A Short While, To Be A Friend At All.

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

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

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

I Don't Think Souls Or Bodies Can Be Changed By Incantation. Or Anything Else By The Way.

Religion Gets Its Morality From Us. We Don't Get Our Morality From Religion.

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.

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.

As I've Said Before, You Can Be An Atheist And Anything You Like.

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.

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

I Make Preparations Both To Live And To Die Every Day, But With The Emphasis On Not Dying, And On Acting As If I Was Going To Carry On Living.

In The Grip Of A Neurological Disorder, I Am Fast Losing Control Of Words Even As My Relationship With The World Has Been Reduced To Them.

Only The Aspirants For President Are Fool Enough To Believe What They Read In The Newspapers.

The Term 'the American Left' Is As Near To Being Meaningless Or Nonsensical As Any Term Could Really Be In Politics. It Isn't Really A Force In Politics Anymore. And It Would Do Well To Ask Itself Why That Is.

There Is An Unusually High And Consistent Correlation Between The Stupidity Of A Given Person And That Person’s Propensity To Be Impressed By The Measurement Of Iq.

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

It's Often A Bad Sign When People Defend Themselves Against Charges Which Haven't Been Made.

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.

At Oxford One Was Positively Encouraged To Take Wine During Tutorials. The Tongue Must Be Untied.

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

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

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

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."

You Can Be A Polish American, Or An Arab American, Or A Greek American But You Can't Be English American. Why Not?

You Can Only Have One Aim Per Debate.

In Modern Greek History, There Is A Close Relationship Between National Humiliation And Political Radicalization.

Those Of Us Who Write And Study History Are Accustomed To Its Approximations And Ambiguities. This Is Why We Do Not Take Literally The Tenth-hand Reports Of Frightened And Illiterate Peasants Who Claim To Have Seen Miracles Or To Have Had Encounters With Messiahs And Prophets And Redeemers Who Were, Like Them, Mere Humans. And This Is Also Why We Will Never Submit To Dictation From Those Who Display A Fanatical Belief In Certainty And Revelation.

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

To Describe This Film As Dishonest And Demagogic Would Almost Be To Promote Those Terms To The Level Of Respectability. To Describe This Film As A Piece Of Crap Would Be To Run The Risk Of A Discourse That Would Never Again Rise Above The Excremental. To Describe It As An Exercise In Facile Crowd-pleasing Would Be Too Obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 Is A Sinister Exercise In Moral Frivolity, Crudely Disguised As An Exercise In Seriousness.

I Don't Think The War In Afghanistan Was Ruthlessly Enough Waged.

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.

The Stupider The Regime The More Intelligent The People Get And The More Humorous.

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.

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.

Though It Is True We Are The Highest And Smartest Animals, Ospreys Have Eyes We Have Calculated To Be Sixty Times More Powerful And Sophisticated Than Our Own And That Blindness, Often Caused By Microscopic Parasites That Are Themselves Miracles Of Ingenuity, Is One Of The Oldest And Most Tragic Disorders Known To Man. And Why Award The Superior Eye (or In The Case Of Cat Or Bat, Also The Ear) To The Inferior Species.

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

To What Faults Do You Feel Most Indulgent? To The Ones That Arise From Urgent Material Needs.

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

As The Many Male Victims Of Rape In The Regime's Disgusting Jails Can Testify, This State-run Pathology Of Sexual Repression And Sexual Sadism Is Not Content To Degrade Women Only.

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.

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.

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

If God Really Wanted People To Be Free Of [wicked Thoughts], He Should Have Taken More Care To Invent A Different Species.

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.

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.

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.

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

Exceptional Claims, Require Exceptional Evidence.

It [defending Salmon Rushdie] Was, If I Can Phrase It Like This, A Matter Of Everything I Hated Versus Everything I Loved. In The Hate Column: Dictatorship, Religion, Stupidity, Demagogy, Censorship, Bullying And Intimidation. In The Love Column: Literature, Irony, Humor, The Individual And The Defense Of Free Expression.

[e]xceptional Claims Demand Exceptional Evidence.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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.

Those Who Are Determined To Be 'offended' Will Discover A Provocation Somewhere. We Cannot Possibly Adjust Enough To Please The Fanatics, And It Is Degrading To Make The Attempt.

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.

To Be In Opposition Is Not To Be A Nihilist.

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.

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.

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