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My Favorite Time In The Cycles Of Public Life Is The Time When The Pope Is Dead And They Haven't Elected A New One. There's No One In The World Who Is Infallible For Those Weeks. And You Know, I Don't Miss It.

-Christopher Hitchens

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My Favorite Time In

Christopher Hitchens

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My Favorite Time In The Cycles Of Public Life Is The Time When The Pope Is Dead And They Haven't Elected A New One. There's No One In The World Who Is Infallible For Those Weeks. And You Know, I Don't Miss It.

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Nothing Optional -- From Homosexuality To Adultery -- Is Ever Made Punishable Unless Those Who Do The Prohibiting (and Exact The Fierce Punishment) Have A Repressed Desire To Participate.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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?

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.

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

The Great Thing About The United States And The Historically Magnetic Effect It Has Had On A Lot Of People Like Me Is Its Generosity, To Put It Simply.

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 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.

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.

America Was Not Interventionist Enough, Which, Of Course, Did Mean A Bit Of A Breach With Old Comrades On The Left. I Felt The International Left In The Countries Concerned Took The Same Position As I Did. So, In My View, It's The Left That's Become Reactionary And Isolationist And Parochial.

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

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

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

Bertrand Russell Used To Employ The Method Of "evidence Against Interest"; In Other Words Of Deciding That A Critique Of Capital Punishment, Say, Carried More Weight If It Came From A Prison Governor. (my Friend John O'sullivan Puts It Like This: If The Pope Says He Believes In God, He's Only Doing His Job; If He Says He Doesn't Believe In God, He May Be On To Something.)

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.

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.

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.

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Terrorism Works Better As A Tactic For Dictatorships, Or For Would-be Dictators, Than For Revolutionaries .

It Would Have Been Very Alarming - Morally, And In Other Ways Too - If An Attack Of That Nature, The 11 September Attacks, Had Not Aroused In Us And In Our Governments And Societies The Spirit Of Self-defence. If That Had Not Been One Of The Responses It Seems To Me There Would Have Been Very Grave Cause For Concern.

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

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An Individual Deficient In The Sense Of Humor Represents More Of A Challenge To Our Idea Of The Human Than A Person Of Subnormal Intelligence

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Don't Swallow Your Moral Code In Tablet Form.

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

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?

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Scum Of The Earth

I Have Been Called Arrogant Myself In My Time, And Hope To Earn The Title Again, But To Claim That I Am Privy To The Secrets Of The Universe And Its Creator - That's Beyond My Conceit.

I Must Have Been One Of The Least Surprised People On Earth On September 11. I Felt Very Braced For That. I Knew Something Like That Was Going To Come.

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.

[i]f You Think That American Imperialism And Its Globalised, Capitalist Form Is The Most Dangerous Thing In The World, That Means You Don't Think The Islamic Republic Of Iran Or North Korea Or The Taliban Is As Bad.

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

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.

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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.

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The Struggle For A Free Intelligence Has Always Been A Struggle Between The Ironic And The Literal Mind.

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"objective" Means That, In A Confrontation With The Evidence, You Would Be Willing To Change Your Own Mind.

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I'm Terrified Of Losing My Voice.

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Religion Is Part Of The Human Make-up. It's Also Part Of Our Cultural And Intellectual History. Religion Was Our First Attempt At Literature, The Texts, Our First Attempt At Cosmology, Making Sense Of Where We Are In The Universe, Our First Attempt At Health Care, Believing In Faith Healing, Our First Attempt At Philosophy.

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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.

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

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

The People Who Tend To Raise Antiwar Slogans Will Do So Generally When It's American Or British Interests Involved.

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 Has Been An Enormous Multiplier Of Tribal Suspicion And Hatred.

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.

Religion Is Poison Because It Asks Us To Give Up Our Most Precious Faculty, Which Is That Of Reason, And To Believe Things Without Evidence. It Then Asks Us To Respect This, Which It Calls Faith.

Along With Islam And Christianity, Judaism Does Insist That Some Turgid And Contradictory And Sometimes Evil And Mad Texts, Obviously Written By Fairly Unexceptional Humans, Are In Fact The Word Of God. I Think That The Indispensable Condition Of Any Intellectual Liberty Is The Realisation That There Is No Such Thing.

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

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

So Far, I Have Decided To Take Whatever My Disease Can Throw At Me, And To Stay Combative Even While Taking The Measure Of My Inevitable Decline. I Repeat, This Is No More Than What A Healthy Person Has To Do In Slower Motion.

She's Got No Charisma Of Any Kind [but] I Can Imagine Her Being Mildly Useful To A Low-rank Porn Director.

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

I Don’t Have A Body, I Am A Body.

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

George Bush Made A Mistake When He Referred To The Saddam Hussein Regime As 'evil.' Every Liberal And Leftist Knows How To Titter At Such Black-and-white Moral Absolutism.

Black And White

Moral Absolutism

The Diet Book Is One Of Those Fool-and-money Separation Devices That Seems, Like Roulette Or Slot Machines, Never To Lose Its Power.

Suppose There Were Groups Of Secularists At Hospitals Who Went Round The Terminally Ill And Urged Them To Adopt Atheism: 'don't Be A Mug All Your Life. Make Your Last Days The Best Ones. People Might Suppose This Was In Poor Taste.

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.

I Became A Journalist Because I Didn't Want To Have To Rely On The Press For Information... I Only Read It To Make Sure Of Whatever Everyone Else Thinks Is Going On, Because It's Useful To Know What People Think Is The News.

One Has Children In The Expectation Of Dying Before Them. In Fact, You Want To Make Damn Sure You Die Before Them, Just As You Plant A Tree Or Build A House Knowing, Hoping That It Will Outlive You. That's How The Human Species Has Done As Well As It Has.

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.

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

The Pornography Of Tough-mindedness, Covert Action, And Preparedness For "peace Through Strength" Has Had A Predictably Hypnotic Effect On The Legislative Branch, Turning It From Legal Watchdog To Lapdog.

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.

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

The Human Wish To Credit Good Things As Miraculous And To Charge Bad Things To Another Account Is Apparently Universal.

The Beauty Of Science Hugely Outranks The Charms Of Superstition.

The Secular State Is The Guarantee Of Religious Pluralism. This Apparent Paradox, Again, Is The Simplest And Most Elegant Of Political Truths.

How Is The United States At Once The Most Conservative And Commercial And The Most Revolutionary Society On Earth?

A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory.

The Press Is Still Investing Itself, It Seems To Me, In A Sort Of Cynicism. It Comes Out Better For Them If They Can Predict Hard Times, Bogging Down, Sniping, Attrition.

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.

Primate And Elephant And Even Pig Societies Show Considerable Evidence Of Care For Others, Parent-child Bonding, Solidarity In The Face Of Danger, And So On.

The Postmodernists' Tyranny Wears People Down By Boredom And Semi-literate Prose.

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

I'm 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.

Religion Makes Kind People Say Unkind Things: "i Must Prove My Faith, So Mutilate The Genitals Of My Children." They Wouldn't Do That If God Didn't Tell Them To Do So.

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.

If You've Led A Rather Bohemian And Rackety Life, As I Have, It's Precisely The Cancer That You'd Expect To Get. That's A Bit Of A Yawn.

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.'

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

When The [us] President Writes To Kim Jong Il, The Son, The Dear Leader, He Doesn't Call Him Dear Mr President, He Calls Him Dear Mr Secretary. Have You Ever Noticed That? Why Is That? Because He's Not The President Of North Korea, He's The Head Of The Communist Party, The North Korean Workers' Party And He's The Head Of The Army. He's Not Head Of The State. The Head Of The State Is His Father, Who's Been Dead For 15 Years.

For Most Of My Life I Let Women Do The Driving And Was Happy To Let Them.

Do Not Imagine That You Can Escape Judgment If You Rob People With A False Prospectus Rather Than With A Knife.

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.

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.

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.

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

Here We Are Then, I Was Thinking, In A War To The Finish Between Everything I Love And Everything I Hate. Fine. We Will Win And They Will Lose. A Pity That We Let Them Pick The Time And Place Of The Challenge, But We Can And We Will Make Up For That.

If I Convert It's Because It's Better That A Believer Dies Than That An Atheist Does.

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

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.

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.

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

I Learned That To Be Amusing Was Not To Be Frivolous And That Language - Always The Language - Was The Magic Key As Much To Prose As To Poetry.

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?

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.

In Our Native Terms, The Ironic Style Is Often Compounded With The Sardonic And The Hard-boiled; Even The Effortlessly Superior. But Irony Originates In The Glance And The Shrug Of The Loser, The Outsider, The Despised Minority. It Is A Nuance That Comes Most Effortlessly To The Oppressed.

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.

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

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

And The Pleasures And Rewards Of The Intellect Are Inseparable From Angst, Uncertainty, Conflict And Even Despair.

All This Could Be Part Of A Plan. There Is No Way An Atheist Can Prove It’s Not. But It’s Some Plan, Isn't It? With Mass Destruction, Pitiless Extermination, Annihilation Going On All The Time. And All Of This Set In Motion On A Scale That’s Absolutely Beyond Our Imagination, In Order That The Pope Can Tell People Not To Jerk Off.

Mass Destruction

One Can't Live Without Fear, It's A Question Of What Is Your Attitude Towards Fear? I'm Afraid Of A Sordid Death. I'm Afraid That I Will Die In An Ugly Or Squalid Way, And Cancer Can Be Very Vigorous In That Respect.

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.

Endless Praise And Adoration, Limitless Abnegation And Abjection Of Self; A Celestial North Korea.

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.

Heroism Breaks Its Heart, And Idealism Its Back, On The Intransigence Of The Credulous And The Mediocre, Manipulated By The Cynical And The Corrupt.

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

For Some Reason, Which I Believe I Can Guess, The Churches/mosques Want Control Of People When Or While They Are The Most Vulnerable Or Suggestible. If They Can't Get Them In School, Then They Get Them When They Are Hungry, Or Frightened, Or Ill, Or Homeless, Or Unemployed. Same Difference. Here's Your Gruel, And Here's A Tract.

Even The Most Humane And Compassionate Of The Monotheisms And Polytheisms Are Complicit In This Quiet And Irrational Authoritarianism: They Proclaim Us, In Fulke Greville's Unforgettable Line, "created Sick Commanded To Be Well." And There Are Totalitarian Insinuations To Back This Up If Its Appeal Should Fail.

Religion Has Run Out Of Justifications. Thanks To The Telescope And The Microscope, It No Longer Offers An Explanation Of Anything Important. Where Once It Used To Able, By Its Total Command Of A Worldview, To Prevent The Emergence Of Rivals, It Can Now Only Impede And Retard-or Try To Turn Back-the Measureable Advances That We Have Made.

We Have Millions And Millions Of North Korean Children Totally Stunted In Mind And Body And Will Have To Be Dealt With At Some Point, Who Have Been Raised To Believe That They Live In A Regime That Is Run By A God.

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.

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.

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.

Our Belief Is Not A Belief. Our Principles Are Not A Faith. We Do Not Rely Soley Upon Science And Reason, Because These Are Necessary Rather Than Sufficient Factors, But We Distrust Anything That Contradicts Science Or Outrages Reason. We May Differ On Many Things, But What We Respect Is Free Inquiry, Openmindedness, And The Pursuit Of Ideas For Their Own Sake.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

I'd Like To Prove To Other People That It's Not The End Of Everything To Be Diagnosed With Cancer.

Benito Mussolini Had Barely Seized Power In Italy Before The Vatican Made An Official Treaty With Him, Known As The Lateran Pact Of 1929. Under The Terms Of This Deal, Catholicism Became The Only Recognized Religion In Italy, With Monopoly Powers Over Matters Such As Birth, Marriage, Death, And Education, And In Return Urged Its Followers To Vote For Mussolini's Party. Pope Pius Xi Described Ii Duce (“the Leader”) As “a Man Sent By Providence.”

Millions Of People Die Every Day. Everyone's Got To Go Sometime. I've Came By This Particular Tumor Honestly. If You Smoke, Which I Did For Many Years Very Heavily With Occasional Interruption, And If You Use Alcohol, You Make Yourself A Candidate For It In Your Sixties.

With Modern American Dentistry It Is Simply Amazing To See What Transformation Can Be Wrought In A Single Day.

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.

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.

The Role Of Dissident Is Not, And Should Not Be, A Claim Of Membership In A Communion Of Saints. In Other Words, The More Fallible The Mammal, The Truer The Example.

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

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

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.

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.

One Of The Reasons I Decided To Apply For American Citizenship After Something Like A Quarter Of Century Of Living Here On A British, European Union Passport And A Green Card, Was My Identification With The United States In The Post-september 11th Period.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I'm Not Afraid Of Being Dead, That's To Say There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of. I Won't Know I'm Dead, Would Be My Strong Conviction. And If I Find That I'm Alive In Any Way At All, That'll Be A Pleasant Surprise. I Quite Like Surprises.

The Moment Of Near Despair Is Quite Often The Moment That Precedes Courage.

I Still Make Sure To Go, At Least Once Every Year, To A Country Where Things Cannot Be Taken For Granted, And Where There Is Either Too Much Law And Order Or Too Little.

[e]xceptional Claims Demand Exceptional Evidence.

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.

The Disquieting Thing About Newscaster-babble Or Editorial-speak Is Its Ready Availability As A Serf Idiom, A Vernacular Of Deference. "mr. Secretary, Are We Any Nearer To Bringing About A Dialogue In This Process ?

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.

Part Of The Function Of Memory Is To Forget; The Omni-retentive Mind Will Break Down And Produce At Best An Idiot Savant Who Can Recite A Telephone Book, And At Worst A Person To Whom Every Grudge And Slight Is As Yesterday's.

Whenever I Hear Some Bigmouth In Washington Or The Christian Heartland Banging On About The Evils Of Sodomy Or Whatever, I Mentally Enter His Name In My Notebook And Contentedly Set My Watch. Sooner Rather Than Later, He Will Be Discovered Down On His Weary And Well-worn Old Knees In Some Dreary Motel Or Latrine, With An Expired Visa Card, Having Tried To Pay Well Over The Odds To Be Peed Upon By Some Apache Transvestite.

It's Not At All Good When Your Cancer Is 'palpable' From The Outside. Especially When, As At This Stage, They Didn't Even Know Where The Primary Source Was. Carcinoma Works Cunningly From The Inside Out. Detection And Treatment Often Work More Slowly And Gropingly, From The Outside In.

It's Much Worse To See A Woman Drunk Than A Man: I Don't Know Quite Why This Is True But It Just Is. Don't Ever Be Responsible For It.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Difficult Choices

Take The Risk Of Thinking For Yourself

Greatest Atheist

"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.

Name A Moral Statement Or Action, Uttered Or Performed By A Religious Person That Could Not Have Been Uttered Or Performed By An Unbeliever.

Religion Of Every Kind Involves The Promise That The Misery And Futility Of Existence Can Be Overcome Or Even Transfigured. One Might Suppose That The Possession Of Such A Magnificent Formula, Combined With The Tremendous Assurance Of A Benevolent God, Would Make A Person Happy. But Such Appears Not To Be The Case.: Unease And Insecurity And Rage Seem To Keep Up With Blissful Certainty, And Even To Outpace It.

Nothing Could Make Me Forget What The Reagan Years Had Actually Been Like.

Judaism Is Not Just One More Religion, But In Its Way The Root Of Religious Evil

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

If You Think That The Intifada In France Is About Housing, Go And Try Covering The Story Wearing A Yarmulka .

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.

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?

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

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.

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