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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.
-Christopher Hitchens
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In One Was, I

Christopher Hitchens
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.
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Topic
Light
Giving
Lovely
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A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory. Kissinger Is A Stupendous Liar With A Remarkable Memory.
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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.
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Name One Moral Action Performed By A Believer That Could Not Have Been Done By A Nonbeliever.
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Thinking
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Fall
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Self
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Animal
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Conspiracy
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Stupid
Medicine
Long
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Prayer
What If
Factions
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Religion
Firsts
Advantage
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United States
Earth
Conservative
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Hands
Important
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Journalist
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Atheist
Said
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Opposition
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Scotch
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Atheist
Atheism
Conclusion
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Merry Christmas
Thinking
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Stupid
Unity
Economy
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Cancer
Father
Race
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Dark
Night
Giving
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.
Preparation
Dying
Acting
I Can't Compose Or Play Music; I'm Not That Fortunate. But I Can Write And I Can Talk And Sometimes When I'm Doing Either Of These Things I Realize That I've Written A Sentence Or Uttered A Thought That I Didn't Absolutely Know I Had In Me... Until I Saw It On The Page Or Heard Myself Say It.
Writing
Play
Pages
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
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
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Boredom
Dies
Sheer
My Dear Wife Has, I Would Say, Probably Never Opened A Religious Book, And Seems To Be One Of Those People To Whom The Whole Idea Is Utterly Remote And Absurd.
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Book
Ideas
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.
Thinking
Political
Able
You Notice How Liberals Keep Saying, 'if Only Islam Would Have A Reformation' - It Can't Have One. It Says It Can't. It's Extremely Dangerous In That Way.
Islam
Way
Dangerous
Arguments That Explain Everything... Explain Nothing
Argument
Islam Makes Very Large Claims For Itself. In Its Art, There Is A Prejudice Against Representing The Human Form At All. The Prohibition On Picturing The Prophet - Who Was Only Another Male Mammal - Is Apparently Absolute. So Is The Prohibition On Pork Or Alcohol Or, In Some Muslim Societies, Music Or Dancing. Very Well Then, Let A Good Muslim Abstain Rigorously From All These. But If He Claims The Right To Make Me Abstain As Well, He Offers The Clearest Possible Warning And Proof Of An Aggressive Intent.
Art
Dancing
Alcohol
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
The Noble Title Of "dissident" Must Be Earned Rather Than Claimed; It Connotes Sacrifice And Risk Rather Than Mere Disagreement.
Sacrifice
Risk
Titles
Of Course, I Do Everything For Money.
Courses
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.
Atheist
World
This World
No One Has The Right To Tell Me What To Do Because He Has A Divine Warrant.
Religion
Divine
Warrants
Will An Iraq War Make Our Al Qaeda Problem Worse? Not Likely.
War
Iraq
Als
We Know How To Think. We Know How To Laugh. We Know We're Going To Die, Which Gives Us A Lot To Think About, And We Have A Need For, What I Would Call, "the Transcendent" Or "the Numinous" Or Even "the Ecstatic" That Comes Out In Love And Music, Poetry, And Landscape. I Wouldn't Trust Anyone Who Didn't Respond To Things Of That Sort.
Thinking
Giving
Laughing
In Order To Terminate A Pregnancy, You Have To Still A Heartbeat, Switch Off A Developing Brain.
Pregnancy
Order
Abortion
The Violence In The Bible Is Appalling.
Violence
A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory.
Memories
Liars
Good Memories
Billy Graham Is A Boring, Racist Charlatan.
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Racist
Boring
Skepticism Rather Than Credulity Is The Highest Principle That The Human Intellect Can Use To Ennoble Our Existence.
Religion
Use
Principles
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
To 'choose' Dogma And Faith Over Doubt And Experience Is To Throw Out The Ripening Vintage And To Reach Greedily For The Kool-aid.
Atheist
Vintage
Doubt
I Learned That Very Often The Most Intolerant And Narrow-minded People Are The Ones Who Congratulate Themselves On Their Tolerance And Open-mindedness.
Hypocrite
People
Tolerance
It's The Professional Deformation Of Many Writers, And Has Ruined Not A Few. (i Remember Kingsley Amis, Himself No Slouch, Saying That He Could Tell On What Page Of The Novel Paul Scott Had Reached For The Bottle And Thrown Caution To The Winds.)
Writing
Wind
Bottles
I Don’t Have A Body, I Am A Body.
Body
I Think The Materialist Conception Of History Is Valid.
Thinking
Conception
If Someone Tells Me That I've Hurt Their Feelings I'm Still Waiting To Hear What Your Point Is.
Atheist
Hurt
Waiting
Three Words For Those Who Want To Put The Christ Back In Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock.
Rocks
Jingles
Three
With Modern American Dentistry It Is Simply Amazing To See What Transformation Can Be Wrought In A Single Day.
Transformation
Modern
Dentistry
I Am Not Even An Atheist So Much As I Am An Antitheist; I Not Only Maintain That All Religions Are Versions Of The Same Untruth, But I Hold That The Influence Of Churches, And The Effect Of Religious Belief Is Positively Harmful. Reviewing The False Claims Of Religion, I Do Not Wish, As Some Sentimental Materialists Affect To Wish, That They Were True. I Do Not Envy Believers Their Faith. I Am Relieved To Think That The Whole Story Is A Sinister Fairy Tale; Life Would Be Miserable If What The Faithful Affirmed Was Actually The Case.
Religious
Atheist
Thinking
Jesus, It Is True, Shows No Personal Interest In Gain, But He Does Speak Of Treasure In Heaven And Even Of Mansions As An Inducement To Follow Him. Is It Not Further True That All Religions Down The Ages Have Shown A Keen Interest In The Amassment Of Material Goods In The Real World?
Jesus
Real
Heaven
I Vote And I Do Jury Duty.
Vote
Duty
Jury Duty
In Ridiculing A Pathetic Human Fallacy, Which Seeks Explanation Where None Need Be Sought And Which Multiplies Unnecessary Assumptions, One Should Not Mimic Primitive Ontology In Order To Challenge It. Better To Dispose Of The Needless Assumption Altogether. This Holds True For Everything From Noah's Flood To The Holocaust.
Atheist
Order
Holocaust
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
The Pre-history Of Our Species Is Hag-ridden With Episodes Of Nightmarish Ignorance And Calamity, For Which Religion Used To Identify, Not Just The Wrong Explanation, But The Wrong Culprit. Human Sacrifices Were Made Preeminently In Times Of Epidemics, Useless Prayers Were Uttered, Bogus Miracles Attested To, And Scapegoats - Such As Jews Or Heretics Or Witches - Hunted Down And Burned.
Prayer
Ignorance
Sacrifice
Margaret Thatcher Has Shown That There Is Power And Dignity To Be Won By Defying The Status Quo And The Majority Rather Than By Adapting To Them. If The British Left, Which She Froze Into Immobility Like Medusa, Could Bring Itself To Learn From This, Then We Might Not Have To Look Upon Her Like Again.
Power
Majority
Medusa
The Koran Shows Every Sign Of Being Thrown Together By Human Beings, As Do All The Other Holy Books.
Book
Together
Holy
The Secular Argument, Or The Liberal Argument, Is To As Much As Possible Remove Taboos So Things Do Not Become Unmentionable; To Let Some Air Into The Discussion.
Air
Argument
Secular
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
Trust Is Not The Same As Faith. A Friend Is Someone You Trust. Putting Faith In Anyone Is A Mistake.
Faith
Mistake
Very Often The Test Of One's Allegiance To A Cause Or To A People Is Precisely The Willingness To Stay The Course When Things Are Boring, To Run The Risk Of Repeating An Old Argument Just One More Time, Or Of Going One More Round With A Hostile Or (much Worse) Indifferent Audience.
Running
People
Risk
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
Take The Risk Of Thinking For Yourself. Much More Happiness, Truth, Beauty And Wisdom Will Come To You That Way.
Thinking
Texas
Risk
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
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
In Order To Be A Part Of The Totalitarian Mind-set, It Is Not Necessary To Wear A Uniform Or Carry A Club Or A Whip. It Is Only Necessary To Wish For Your Own Subjection, And To Delight In The Subjection Of Others.
Order
Mind
Wish
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.
Morning
Hate
First Love
I Think Being An Atheist Is Something You Are, Not Something You Do.
Atheist
Thinking
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
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
Hannah Arendt In Her Study Of Totalitarianism Borrowed From Immanuel Kant The Concept Of Radical Evil, Of Evil That's So Evil That In The End It Destroys Itself, It's So Committed To Evil And It's So Committed To Hatred And Cruelty That It Becomes Suicidal. My Definition Of It Is The Surplus Value That's Generated By Totalitarianism. It Means You Do More Violence, More Cruelty Than You Absolutely Have To To Stay In Power.
Suicidal
Mean
Evil
It's Often A Bad Sign When People Defend Themselves Against Charges Which Haven't Been Made.
People
Made
Havens
Demands That You Believe The Impossible Do Not Lead To Peaceful Outcomes.
Believe
Peaceful
Demand
The Taming And Domestication Of Religion Is One Of The Unceasing Chores Of Civilization.
Civilization
Taming
Chores
The Rich World Likes And Wishes To Believe That Someone, Somewhere, Is Doing Something For The Third World. For This Reason, It Does Not Inquire Too Closely Into The Motives Or Practices Of Anyone Who Fulfills, However Vicariously, This Mandate.
Believe
Practice
Wish
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
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
The Thing About Religion Is That It's The First And The Worst. The Worst Because It's The First.
Firsts
Worst
No Child's Behind Left.
Children
Religion
Behinds
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
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
There Is No English Surname, However Ancient And Dignified, That Cannot Instantly Be Improved By The Prefix ‘spanker’.
Ancient
Surnames
And When I Was Young, My Family Was Perfectly Nice. I Write A Lot About It, As You Noticed. But It Was Rather Limited. I Think, I Don't Think Anyone In My Family Would Really Feel I'd Done Them An Injustice By Saying That. We Didn't See Many People. There Were Many Books. It Was As If I Wanted To Get Away From Home.
Nice
Book
Writing
It's A Curious Thing In American Life That The Most Abject Nonsense Will Be Excused If The Utterer Can Claim The Sanction Of Religion. A Country Which Forbids An Established Church By Law Is Prey To Any Denomination. The Best That Can Be Said Is That This Is Pluralism Of A Kind.
Country
Atheist
Law
If You Gave [jerry] Falwell An Enema He Could Be Buried In A Matchbox.
Atheist
Religion
Buried
Your Favorite Virtue? An Appreciation For Irony.
Appreciation
Irony
Virtue
I'm Afraid The Ss's Relationship With The Catholic Church Is Something The Church Still Has To Deal With And Does Not Deny.
Catholic
Church
Doe
In One Way, I Suppose, I Have Been 'in Denial' For Some Time, Knowingly Burning The Candle At Both Ends And Finding That It Often Gives A Lovely Light.
Light
Giving
Lovely
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
Evolution Is, As Well As Smarter Than We Are, Infinitely More Callous And Cruel, And Also Capricious.
Evolution
Capricious
Callous
The Human Wish To Credit Good Things As Miraculous And To Charge Bad Things To Another Account Is Apparently Universal.
Wish
Credit
Good Things
To What Faults Do You Feel Most Indulgent? To The Ones That Arise From Urgent Material Needs.
Needs
Faults
Materialism
It Is Interesting To Find That People Of Faith Now Seek Defensively To Say That They Are No Worse Than Fascists Or Nazis Or Stalinists
People
Interesting
Religion
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
Since I Speak And Write About This A Good Deal, I Am Often Asked At Public Meetings, In What Sometimes Seems To Me A Rather Prurient Way, Whether I Myself Or My Family Have 'ever Been Threatened' By Jihadists. My Answer Is That Yes, I Have, And So Has Everyone Else In The Audience, If They Have Paid Enough Attention To The Relevant Bin-ladenist Broadcasts To Notice The Fact.
Writing
Facts
Attention
High Moral Character Is Not A Precondition For Great Moral Accomplishments.
Character
Accomplishment
Moral
I Retain What's Interesting To Me, But I Don't Have A Lot Of Strategic Depth.
Interesting
Depth
Strategic
Knowing That We Are Primates, I Think, Is A Fascinating Discovery, And A Very Interesting And Rather Cheering One.
Cheer
Thinking
Discovery
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 Crucial Distinction Between Systems...was No Longer Ideological. The Main Political Difference Was Between Those Who Did, And Those Who Did Not, Believe That The Citizen Could -- Or Should -- Be The Property Of The State.
Believe
Political Differences
Citizens
The Gods That We've Made Are Exactly The Gods You'd Expect To Be Made By A Species That's About Half A Chromosome Away From Being Chimpanzee.
Religion
Half
Chimpanzees
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'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 Think The War In Afghanistan Was Ruthlessly Enough Waged.
War
Thinking
Enough
If God Really Wanted People To Be Free Of [wicked Thoughts], He Should Have Taken More Care To Invent A Different Species.
Taken
Should Have
People
Suddenly That It Was As Dangerous To Be In America As It Was To Be Overseas. So That The False Distinction That's Made By The Anti-war Movement Between Being Over There And Over Here Was Exposed For All To See As An Illusion. Although A Number Of People, A Large Amount Of People Still Share In It. In Other Words, When I've Been In Iraq Or Afghanistan, I've Probably Been Safer Because I Can Carry A Weapon If I Have To, Than My Wife And Daughter Are Living In Washington.
Daughter
War
Iraq
People Are Frightened Of Death, And The Central Lie Of All Religion Is That There’s A Cure For This And An Exception We’ve Made In Your Own Case: An Eternal Life Offered If You Make The Right Propitiations And The Right Abjections. Well, I’m Sorry. I Think That It's The Height Of Immorality To Lie To People Like That. That’s Why [religion] Survives.
Sorry
Lying
Thinking
As The Many Male Victims Of Rape In The Regime's Disgusting Jails Can Testify, This State-run Pathology Of Sexual Repression And Sexual Sadism Is Not Content To Degrade Women Only.
Running
Jail
Sadism
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
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
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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