Background Image

...

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.

-Christopher Hitchens

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It Is A Horrible

Christopher Hitchens

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Christopher Hitchens

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

You Should Be Nicer To Him,' A Schoolmate Had Once Said To Me Of Some Awfully Ill-favored Boy. 'he Has No Friends.' This, I Realized With A Pang Of Pity That I Can Still Remember, Was Only True As Long As Everybody Agreed To It.

One Of The Most Repellent Spectacles At Election Times Is The Pretense Of Piety On The Part Of People Running For Office.

I Have Not Been Able To Discover Whether There Exists A Precise French Equivalent For The Common Anglo-american Expression 'killing Time.' It's A Very Crass And Breezy Expression, When You Ponder It For A Moment, Considering That Time, After All, Is Killing Us.

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.

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

In The Aftermath Of The Recent Wave Action In The Indian Ocean, Even The Archbishop Of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], Proved Himself A Latter-day Voltairean By Whimpering That He Could See How This Might Shake Belief In A Friendly Creator. Williamson Is Of Course A Notorious Fool, Who Does An Almost Perfect Imitation Of A Bleating And Frightened Sheep, But Even So, One Is Forced To Rub One's Eyes In Astonishment. Is It Possible That A Grown Man Could Live So Long And Still Have His Personal Composure, Not To Mention His Lifetime Job Description, Upset By A Large Ripple Of Seawater?

I Had Real Plans For My Next Decade And Felt I'd Worked Hard Enough To Earn It. Will I Really Not Live To See My Children Married? To Watch The World Trade Center Rise Again? To Read - If Not Indeed Write - The Obituaries Of Elderly Villains Like Henry Kissinger And Joseph Ratzinger?

A Rule Of Thumb With Humor; If You Worry That You Might Be Going Too Far, You Have Already Not Gone Far Enough. If Everybody Laughs, You Have Failed.

The Politicized Sponsors Of This Pseudoscientific Nonsense Should Be Ashamed To Live, Let Alone Die. If You Want To Take Part In The “war” Against Cancer, And Other Terrible Maladies, Too, Then Join The Battle Against Their Lethal Stupidity.

Every Campaign, Garry Wills Once Wrote, "taught Nixon The Same Lesson: Mobilize Resentment Against Those In Power." History Taught The Same To Many Conservative And Reactionary Populist Movements, Whose Real Attitude To Those In Power And Authority Was One Of A Servile, Envious, Vicarious Adoration.

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.

What Better Way For A Ruling Class To Claim And Hold Power Than To Pose As The Defenders Of The Nation.

I'm A Member Of No Party. I Have No Ideology. I'm A Rationalist. I Do What I Can In The International Struggle Between Science And Reason And The Barbarism, Superstition And Stupidity That's All Around Us.

Take The Risk Of Thinking For Yourself

Greatest Atheist

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.

In The Brute Physical World, And The One Encompassed By Medicine, There Are All Too Many Things That Could Kill You, Don't Kill You, And Then Leave You Considerably Weaker.

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

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

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.

Mockery Of Religion Is One Of The Most Essential Things Because To Demystify Supposedly 'holy Text Dictated By God' And Show That They Are Man Made And What You Have To Show [is] There Internal Inconsistencies And Absurdities. One Of The Beginnings Of Human Emancipation Is The Ability To Laugh At Authority... It Is An Indispensable Thing People Can Call It Blasphemy If They Like, But If They Call It That They Have To Assume There Is Something To Be Blasphemed - Some Divine Work, Well I Don't Accept The Premise.

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

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.

A Celebrity Is Well Known For Being Well Known. I'm Relatively Well Known - But For What I've Written And Said, Or So I Fondly Imagine.

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

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

Exceptional Claims, Require Exceptional Evidence.

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

[p]erhaps You Notice How The Denial Is So Often The Preface To The Justification.

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

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

I Am, I Hope, Never Offensive By Accident.

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.

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

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.

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 Waterboarding Does Not Constitute Torture, Then There Is No Such Thing As Torture.

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

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

To Remember Friendship Is To Recall Those Conversations That It Seemed A Sin To Break Off

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Everything Everyone Thinks They Know About [mother Teresa] Is False. It Must Be The Single Most Successful Emotional Con Job Of The Twentieth Century.

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

Billy Graham Is A Boring, Racist Charlatan.

A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory.

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.

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

Ruthless And Arrogant Though Power Can Appear, It Is Only Ever Held By Mere Mammals Who Excrete And Yearn, And Who Suffer From Insomnia And Insecurity. These Mammals Are Also Necessarily Vain In The extreme, And Often Wish To Be Liked Almost As Much As They Desire To Be Feared.

Here Is My Challenge. Name One Ethical Statement Made, Or One Ethical Action Performed, By A Believer That Could Not Have Been Uttered Or Done By A Nonbeliever. And Here Is My Second Challenge. Can Any Reader Think Of A Wicked Statement Made, Or An Evil Action Performed, Precisely Because Of Religious Faith? The Second Question Is Easy To Answer, Is It Not? The First - I Have Been Asking It For Some Time - Awaits A Convincing Reply. By What Right, Then, Do The Faithful Assume This Irritating Mantle Of Righteousness? They Have As Much To Apologize For As To Explain.

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

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

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.

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.

The Teachings Of Christianity - From Vicarious Redemption To The Love Of Enemies, No Thought For The Morrow Need Be Taken, That No Thrift Or Care Or Family Or Society Or Solidarity Is Necessary - These Are Immoral Teachings That Have Done And Continue To Inflict Untold Moral And Physical Harm On Our Species. And Until We Outgrow This Nonsense, We Have No Chance Of Emancipating Ourselves.

Most Of The Utopian Community Ideas Actually Are Religious. They're Based More On The Idea Of The Monastery Than The Commune.

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

It's No Fun To Appreciate To The Full The Truth Of The Materialist Proposition That I Don't Have A Body, I Am A Body.

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

The Atheist Proposition Is The Following - Most Of The Time - It May Not Be Said That There Is No God; It May Be Said That There Is No Reason To Think That There Is One.

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

Religion Has Been An Enormous Multiplier Of Tribal Suspicion And Hatred.

Solidarity Is An Attitude Of Resistance, I Suppose, Or It Should Be.

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.

I Don't Envy Or Much Respect People Who Are Completely Politicised.

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

There's A Big Difference, As I'm Sure You Know, It's A Slightly Manneristic One, Between People Of The '60s And People Of '68. Being A Soixante-huitard - It's So Nice To Have A French Word For It - Is Very Different From Just Having Happened To Been A Baby Boomer In The '60s.

The Amazing Fact Is That America Is Founded On A Document. It's A Work In Progress. It Can Be Tested By Each Generation.

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.

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

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.

Why Do Humans Exist? A Major Part Of The Answer: Because Pikaia Gracilens Survived The Burgess Decimation.

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

To Be The Father Of Growing Daughters Is To Understand Something Of What Yeats Evokes With His Imperishable Phrase 'terrible Beauty.' Nothing Can Make One So Happily Exhilarated Or So Frightened: It's A Solid Lesson In The Limitations Of Self To Realize That Your Heart Is Running Around Inside Someone Else's Body. It Also Makes Me Quite Astonishingly Calm At The Thought Of Death: I Know Whom I Would Die To Protect And I Also Understand That Nobody But A Lugubrious Serf Can Possibly Wish For A Father Who Never Goes Away.

Jesus Is Santa Claus For Adults.

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

A Sort Of Moral Blackmail Is Exerted From Both Poles. The Underclass, One Gathers, Should Be Dulled With Charity And Welfare Provision Lest It Turn Nasty. The Upper Class Must Likewise Be Conciliated By Vast Handouts, Lest It Lose The "incentive" To Go On Generating Wealth.

What If I Pulled Through And The Pious Faction Contentedly Claimed That Their Prayers Had Been Answered? That Would Somehow Be Irritating.

I'm Not Particularly A Feminist, But If You Get Women Off The Animal Cycle Of Reproduction And Give Them Some Say In How Many Children They'll Have, Immediately The Floor Will Rise.

The Mildest Criticism Of Religion Is Also The Most Radical And The Most Devastating One. Religion Is Man-made.

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

You Have To Choose Your Future Regrets.

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.

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

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

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

You Can Only Have One Aim Per Debate.

Kissinger Projects A Strong Impression Of A Man At Home In The World And On Top Of His Brief. But There Are A Number Of Occasions When It Suits Him To Pose As A Sort Of Candide: Naive, And Ill-prepared For And Easily Unhorsed By Events. No Doubt This Pose Costs Him Something In Point Of Self-esteem. It Is A Pose, Furthermore, Which He Often Adopts At Precisely The Time When The Record Shows Him To Be Knowledgeable, And When Knowledge Or Foreknowledge Would Also Confront Him With Charges Of Responsibility Or Complicity.

No Child's Behind Left.

I Appear As A Skeptic, Who Believes That Doubt Is The Great Engine, The Great Fuel Of All Inquiry, All Discovery And All Innovation.

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.

I Think The Socialist Movement, By Removing Many, Many People From Grinding Stagnation And Poverty And Overwork, Does Enable People Not Just To Lead Better Lives But To Be Better People.

Morality Comes From Humanism And Is Stolen By Religion For Its Own Purposes.

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.

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

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.

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

A Bit Of A Stomach Give A Chap A Position In Society.

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

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.

Happiness Is Fleeting And Life Is Brief, But We Know That, Nonetheless, Life Can Be Savored And That Happiness, Even Of The Ecstatic Kind, Is Available To Us.

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

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

It's Normally Agreed That The Question 'how Are You?' Doesn't Put You On Your Oath To Give A Full Or Honest Answer.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Hardest Of All, As One Becomes Older, Is To Accept That Sapient Remarks Can Be Drawn From The Most Unwelcome Or Seemingly Improbable Sources, And That The Apparently More Trustworthy Sources Can Lead One Astray.

Henry Kissinger

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.

All Of Life Is A Wager

Terrorism Is The Tactic Of Demanding The Impossible, And Demanding It At Gunpoint.

Redemption Is Promised At The Low Price Of Surrender Of Your Critical Faculties.

I Don't Have Any Terrific Self-esteem Issues But I Do Sometimes Realise I've Been Too Lucky And That I'm Over-praised. It Makes Me Nervous. I Have This Sense Of Being Overrated.

I Have Tried For Much Of My Life To Write As If I Was Composing My Sentences To Be Read Posthumously.

If Asked My Opinion About Virginity, I Would Say, "i'm Opposed To It." I Don't Think It Deserves To Be Celebrated, At Any Rate. Or At Least, If I'm Not Opposed, I'm Very Highly Skeptical And Critical Of It.

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

A Virgin Can Conceive. A Dead Body Can Walk Again. Your Leprosy Can Be Cured. The Blind Can See. Nonsense. It’s Not Moral To Lie To Children. It’s Not Moral To Lie To Ignorant, Uneducated People And Tell Them That If They Only Would Believe Nonsense, They Can Be Saved. It’s Immoral.

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.

God Did Not Create Man In His Own Image. Evidently, It Was Quite The Other Way About, Which Is The Painless Explanation For The Profusion Of Gods And Religions, And The Fratricide Both Between And Among Faiths, That We See All About Us And That Has So Retarded The Development Of Civilization.

The Taming And Domestication Of Religion Is One Of The Unceasing Chores Of Civilization.

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.

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.

There Are Two Clocks Ticking In Iran. One Is The Democracy Movement Clock Which Is Ticking Now Faster Than It Was But It's Got A Lot Of Catching Up To Do. And Then There's The Clock That's Ticking Towards A Nuclear Weaponry.

Its A Matter Of Principle. If Jews Born In Brooklyn Have A Right To A State In Palestine Then Palestinians Born In Jerusalem Have A Right To A State In Palestine.

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.

The Creation Story Is Ridiculous Garbage. And Has Given Us A Completely False Picture Of Our Origin As A Species And The Origins Of The Cosmos. If You Want A Good Mythical Story It Would Be The Life Of Socrates.

One Of The Great Questions Of Philosophy Is, Do We Innately Have Morality, Or Do We Get It From Celestial Dictation? A Study Of The Ten Commandments Is A Very Good Way Of Getting Into And Resolving That Issue.

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.

And Yet, I Wake Up Every Day To A Sensation Of Pervading Disgust And Annoyance. I Probably Ought To Carry Around Some Kind Of Thermometer Or Other Instrument, To Keep Checking That I Am Not Falling Prey To Premature Curmudgeonhood.

My Own Opinion Is Enough For Me. And I Claim The Right To Defend It Against Any Consensus, Any Majority Anywhere, Any Place, Any Time. And Anyone Who Disagrees With This Can Pick A Number, Get In Line And Kiss My Ass.

Many More People Are Poor And Sick Because Of The Life Of Mt: Even More Will Be Poor And Sick If Her Example Is Followed. She Was A Fanatic, A Fundamentalist, And A Fraud, And A Church That Officially Protects Those Who Violate The Innocent Has Given Us Another Clear Sign Of Where It Truly Stands On Moral And Ethical Questions.

Ethical Questions

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.

Evelyn Waugh Was In Error When He Said That In New York There Was A Neurosis In The Air Which The Inhabitants Mistook For Energy. There Was, Rather, A Tensile Excitement In The Air Which Made One Think - Made Me Think For Many Years - That Time Spent Asleep In New York Was Somehow Time Wasted. Whether This Thought Has Lengthened Or Shortened My Life I Shall Never Know, But It Has Certainly Colored It.

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.

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 A Single-issue Voter, To Get Straight To The Point. I'm Really Only Interested In The Candidate Who's Toughest And Least Apologetic When It Comes To The Confrontation With Islamic Jihadism.

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.

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

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?

Your Least Favorite Virtue, Or Nominee For The Most Overrated One? Faith. Closely Followed—in View Of The Overall Shortage Of Time—by Patience.

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.

[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.

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

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

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

Forgotten Were The Elementary Rules Of Logic, That Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence And That What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Also Be Dismissed Without Evidence.

The Prince's Official Job Description As King Will Be 'defender Of The Faith,' Which Currently Means The State-financed Absurdity Of The Anglican Church, But He Has More Than Once Said Publicly That He Wants To Be Anointed As Defender Of All Faiths—another Indication Of The Amazing Conceit He Has Developed In Six Decades Of Performing The Only Job Allowed Him By The Hereditary Principle: That Of Waiting For His Mother To Expire.

I 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.

We Have Preachers And Savants Who Dilate Endlessly On The Sanctity Of Family And Childhood But Who Tolerate A System In Which A Casual Observer Can Correlate A Child's Social Origin With Its Physical Well-being.

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

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

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

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

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.

Not Many People Come Through Esophageal Cancer And Live To Talk About It, Or Not For Long.

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.

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.

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.

The Cause Of My Life Has Been To Oppose Superstition. It's A Battle You Can't Hope To Win - It's A Battle That's Going To Go On Forever. It's Part Of The Human Condition.

I Have No Time To Waste On This Planet Being Told What To Do By Those Who Think That God Has Given Them Instructions.

As Is So Often The Case With Pieces That Appear In The 'onion,' I Honestly Could Not Decide Whether This Was A Clever Hoax Or Not - The Arguments Were Almost Exactly As Stupid As The Real Thing.

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.

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.

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.

He's A Man [george W. Bush] Who Is Lucky To Be Governor Of Texas. He Is A Man Who Is Unusually Incurious, Abnormally Unintelligent, Amazingly Inarticulate, Fantastically Uncultured, Extraordinarily Uneducated, And Apparently Quite Proud Of All These Things.

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.

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.

It [obama's Nobel Peace Prize] Would Be Like Giving Someone An Oscar In The Hope That It Would Encourage Them To Make A Decent Motion Picture.

I Say That Homosexuality Is Not Just A Form Of Sex, It's A Form Of Love, And It Deserves Our Respect For That Reason.

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

Scum Of The Earth

I've Been Writing A Lot About A New Form Of Russian Imperialism. Actually, Russian Orthodox Imperialism. It's Very Little Remarked That The Cement, The Political, Ideological Cement Of The Russian Regime Now, Communism Having Collapsed And Imploded, Is Increasingly A Confessional One.

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

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.

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 Felt Clinton Represented The Worst Of The 1960s.

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.

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.

Don't Swallow Your Moral Code In Tablet Form.

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.

What They [the 9/11 Attackers] Abominate About 'the West', To Put It In A Phrase, Is Not What Western Liberals Don't Like And Can't Defend About Their Own System, But What They Do Like About It And Must Defend: Its Emancipated Women, Its Scientific Inquiry, Its Separation Of Religion From The State.

You Don't Say 'they All Do It' Unless You Know You've Been Doing It Too.

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

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.

I Personally Want To "do" Death In The Active And Not The Passive, And To Be There To Look It In The Eye And Be Doing Something When It Comes For Me.

You Know, You Can Make A Small Mistake In Language Or Etiquette In Britain, Or You Could When I Was Younger, And Really Be Made To Feel It, And It's The Flick Of A Lash, But It Would Sting, And Especially At School Where There's Not Much Privacy, And So On. You Could, Yes, Undoubtedly Be Made To Feel Crushed.

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

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.

So There's Nothing More Vulgar Than The Sound Of Someone Saying, God Bless America, Someone Who Doesn't Really Believe It, But He Thinks It Will Make Him Look Good To Other People. I Think It's The Most Nauseating Spectacle.

Name One Moral Action Performed By A Believer That Could Not Have Been Done By A Nonbeliever.

Trending Author

Arthur Eddington

Russell M. Nelson

Category