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No, Nothing Is Sacred. And Even If There Were To Be Something Called Sacred, We Mere Primates Wouldn't Be Able To Decide Which Book Or Which Idol Or Which City Was The Truly Holy One. Thus, The Only Thing That Should Be Upheld At All Costs And Without Qualification Is The Right Of Free Expression, Because If That Goes, Then So Do All Other Claims Of Right As Well.

-Christopher Hitchens

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No, Nothing Is Sacred.

Christopher Hitchens

...

No, Nothing Is Sacred. And Even If There Were To Be Something Called Sacred, We Mere Primates Wouldn't Be Able To Decide Which Book Or Which Idol Or Which City Was The Truly Holy One. Thus, The Only Thing That Should Be Upheld At All Costs And Without Qualification Is The Right Of Free Expression, Because If That Goes, Then So Do All Other Claims Of Right As Well.

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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.

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.

There Is Almost No Country In Africa Where It Is Not Essential To Know To Which Tribe, Or Which Subgroup Of Which Tribe, The President Belongs. From This Single Piece Of Information You Can Trace The Lines Of Patronage And Allegiance That Define The State.

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.

Don't Drink On An Empty Stomach: The Main Point Of The Refreshment Is The Enhancement Of Food. Don't Drink If You Have The Blues: It's A Junk Cure. Drink When You Are In A Good Mood. Cheap Booze Is A False Economy. It's Not True That You Shouldn't Drink Alone: These Can Be The Happiest Glasses You Ever Drain. Hangovers Are Another Bad Sign, And You Should Not Expect To Be Believed If You Take Refuge In Saying You Can't Properly Remember Last Night. (if You Really Don't Remember, That's An Even Worse Sign.)

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 Search For Nirvana, Like The Search For Utopia Or The End Of History Or The Classless Society, Is Ultimately A Futile And Dangerous One. It Involves, If It Does Not Necessitate, The Sleep Of Reason. There Is No Escape From Anxiety And Struggle.

Mt [mother Teresa] Was Not A Friend Of The Poor. She Was A Friend Of Poverty. She Said That Suffering Was A Gift From God. She Spent Her Life Opposing The Only Known Cure For Poverty, Which Is The Empowerment Of Women And The Emancipation Of Them From A Livestock Version Of Compulsory Reproduction.

Islamophobia: A Word Created By Fascists, And Used By Cowards, To Manipulate Morons.

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

People Know When They Are Being Lied To, They Know When Their Rulers Are Absurd, They Know They Do Not Love Their Chains.

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.'

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

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

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 Don't Think Consensus-building Politics Is What I'm Meant To Be Doing.

Consensus Building

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.

Time Spent Arguing With The Faithful Is, Oddly Enough, Almost Never Wasted.

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

No, Nothing Is Sacred. And Even If There Were To Be Something Called Sacred, We Mere Primates Wouldn't Be Able To Decide Which Book Or Which Idol Or Which City Was The Truly Holy One. Thus, The Only Thing That Should Be Upheld At All Costs And Without Qualification Is The Right Of Free Expression, Because If That Goes, Then So Do All Other Claims Of Right As Well.

A Sure Sign Of Ineptitude And Malice Is Manifested When One's Attacker Is Willing To Cover Himself With Mud In Order To Try And Make Some Of It Adhere To His Target.

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

Urging Humans To Be Superhumans, On Pain Of Death And Torture, Is The Urging Of Terrible Self-abasement At Their Repeated And Inevitable Failure To Keep The Rules.

I Was Brought Up In A Very Naval, Military, And Conservative Background. My Father And His Friends Had Very Typical Opinions Of The British Middle Class - Lower-middle Class Actually - After The War. My Father Broke Into The Middle Class By Joining The Navy. I Was The First Member Of My Family Ever To Go To Private School Or Even To University. So, The Armed Forces Had Been Upward Mobility For Him.

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

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

Where Would You Like To Live? In A State Of Conflict Or A Conflicted State?

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

The Fact Is: It's True What They Say About The United States. It Is A Land Of Opportunity. It Is Too Various To Get Bored With It.

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.

Of Course, I Do Everything For Money.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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'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.

Teasing Is Very Often A Sign Of Inner Misery.

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

I Think I Write In A Fairly Self-confident Manner.

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.

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

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

I Think Religion Should Be Treated With Ridicule, Hatred And Contempt, And I Claim That Right.

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

Plainly, This Unwillingness To Give Ground Even On Unimportant Disagreements Is The Symptom Of Some Deepseated Insecurity, As Was My One-time Fondness For Making Teasing Remarks (which I Amended When I Read Anthony Powell's Matter-of-fact Observation That Teasing Is An Unfailing Sign Of Misery Within) And As Is My Very Pronounced Impatience. The Struggle, Therefore, Is To Try And Cultivate The Virtuous Side Of These Shortcomings: To Be A Genial Host While Only Slightly Whiffled, For Example, Or To Be Witty At The Expense Of One's Own Weaknesses Instead Of Those Of Other People.

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.

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.

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

We Inherited These Principles And These Freedoms And We Here Highly Resolve That We Shall Pass Them On, As We Will Pass On An Undivided Republic Purged Of Racism And Slavery, To Our Descendants. The Popgun Discharges Of A Few Pathetic Sectarians And Crackpot Revisionists Are Negligible, And Will Be Drowned By The Mounting Chorus That Demands: 'mr Jefferson! Build Up That Wall'.

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.

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.

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.

The Trade-off Between Freedom And Security, So Often Proposed So Seductively, Very Often Leads To The Loss Of Both.

Eternal Vigilance

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It's [los Angeles] Mostly Full Of Nonsense And Delusion And Egomania. They Think They'll Be Young And Beautiful Forever, Even Though Most Of Them Aren't Even Young And Beautiful Now.

Of Course We Have Free Will Because We Have No Choice But To Have It.

Everybody Does Have A Book In Them, But In Most Cases That's Where It Should Stay.

I Retain What's Interesting To Me, But I Don't Have A Lot Of Strategic Depth.

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

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.

No Moral Person Would Do Such A Thing Unless They Thought It Was Divinely Warranted.

When I Abandoned The Smoking Habit Of More Than Three Decades I Was Given A Supposedly Helpful Pill Called Wellbutrin. But As Soon As I Discovered That This Was The Brand Name For An Antidepressant, I Tossed The Bottle Away. There May Be Successful Methods For Overcoming The Blues But For Me They Cannot Include A Capsule That Says: 'fool Yourself Into Happiness, While Pretending Not To Do So.' I Should Actually Want My Mind To Be Strong Enough To Circumvent Such A Trick.

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.

Reagan Is Doing To The Country What He Can No Longer Do To His Wife.

For Me, The Life Of The Angler Is An Almost Flawless Example Of How Not To Have A Good Time.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Faithful Believe That Certain Truths Have Been 'revealed.' The Skeptics And Secularists Believe That Truth Is Only To Be Sought By Free Inquiry And Trial And Error. Only One Of Those Positions Is Dogmatic.

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

'wasp' Is The Only Ethnic Term That Is In Fact A Term Of Class, Apart From Redneck, Which Is Another Word For The Same Group But Who Are In The Lower Social Strata, So It's Inexplicably Tied Up With Social Standing And Culture And History In A Way That The Other Hyphenations Just Are Not.

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.

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.

I Leave It To The Faithful To Burn Each Other's Churches And Mosques And Synagogues, Which They Can Be Always Relied Upon To Do

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 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.

The Koran Shows Every Sign Of Being Thrown Together By Human Beings, As Do All The Other Holy Books.

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

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?

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?

Never Be A Spectator Of Unfairness Or Stupidity. Seek Out Argument And Disputation For Their Own Sake; The Grave Will Supply Plenty Of Time For Silence.

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

Religion Is Compulsory In English Schools, You Know.

A Melancholy Lesson Of Advancing Years Is The Realisation That You Can't Make Old Friends.

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.

It Especially Annoys Me When Racists Are Accused Of 'discrimination.' The Ability To Discriminate Is A Precious Faculty; By Judging All Members On One 'race' To Be The Same, The Racist Precisely Shows Himself Incapable Of Discrimination.

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.

We Know Of No Spectacle More Ridiculous—or More Contemptible—than That Of The Religious Reactionaries Who Dare To Re-write The History Of Our Republic. Or Who Try To Do So. Is It Possible That, In Their Vanity And Stupidity, They Suppose That They Can Erase The Name Of Thomas Jefferson And Replace It With The Name Of Some Faith-based Mediocrity Whose Name Is Already Obscure? If So, We Cheerfully Resolve To Mock Them, And To Give Them The Lie In Their Teeth.

I'm Terrified Of Losing My Voice.

Friends Call Me Hitch. Maybe It Can Be Turned Into A 900-phone Number. People Would Pay To Talk To Me.

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.

All The Excitements Of A Prohibited Book Had Their Usual Effect, One Of Which, As Always, Is To Expose The Fact That The Censors Don't Know What They Are Talking About.

"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.

Alcohol Makes Other People Less Tedious, And Food Less Bland, And Can Help Provide What The Greeks Called Entheos, Or The Slight Buzz Of Inspiration When Reading Or Writing

Our Weapons Are The Ironic Mind Against The Literal: The Open Mind Against The Credulous; The Courageous Pursuit Of Truth Against The Fearful And Abject Forces Who Would Set Limits To Investigation (and Who Stupidly Claim That We Already Have All The Truth We Need). Perhaps Above All, We Affirm Life Over The Cults Of Death And Human Sacrifice And Are Afraid, Not Of Inevitable Death, But Rather Of A Human Life That Is Cramped And Distorted By The Pathetic Need To Offer Mindless Adulation, Or The Dismal Belief That The Laws Of Nature Respond To Wailings And Incantations.

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.

Today The Least Educated Of My Children Knows Much More About The Natural Order Than Any Of The Founders Of Religion, And One Would Think-though The Connection Is Not A Fully Demonstrable One-that This Is Why They Seem So Uninterested In Sending Fellow Humans To Hell.

One Must State It Plainly. Religion Comes From The Period Of Human Pre-history Where Nobody - Not Even The Mighty Democritus Who Concluded That All Matter Was Made From Atoms - Had The Smallest Idea What Was Going On.

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.”

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.

No Possible Future Government In Kabul Can Be Worse Than The Taliban, And No Thinkable Future Government Would Allow The Level Of Al Qaeda Gangsterism To Recur. So The Outcome Is Proportionate And Congruent With International Principles Of Self-defense.

The Iraqi Baath Socialist Party Was Modelled In Large Part On Admiration For European National Socialist And Fascist Movements, Hoped To Emulate Them Especially In Their Nationalism Against The West. But Mutated By Saddam Hussein It Became Also One That Very, Very Much Admired, And Grew A Special Moustache In Admiration Of The Work Of Yosif Vissarionovitch Dzugashvili, The Great Georgian Known To Us Historically As Stalin. So You Had Him In Modern Iraq, A Regime In Our Own Time, That Was Openly, Directly Modelled Upon The Two Most Extreme Examples Of European Totalitarianism.

We Have Known For A Long Time That Prince Charles' Empty Sails Are So Rigged As To Be Swelled By Any Passing Waft Or Breeze Of Crankiness And Cant. He Fell For The Fake Anthropologist Laurens Van Der Post. He Was Bowled Over By The Charms Of Homeopathic Medicine. He Has Been Believably Reported As Saying That Plants Do Better If You Talk To Them In A Soothing And Encouraging Way

There Is No Such Thing As Closure, And It Wouldn't Be Worth Having If It Were Available, Because All It Would Mean Is That Something That Was Quite An Important Part Of You Had Gone Numb.

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

Do I Fear Death? No, I Am Not Afraid Of Being Dead Because There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of, I Won't Know It. I Fear Dying, Of Dying I Feel A Sense Of Waste About It And I Fear A Sordid Death, Where I Am Incapacitated Or Imbecilic At The End Which Isn't Something To Be Afraid Of, It's Something To Be Terrified Of.

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.

There Is No Reason At All Why There Aren't Enough People To Guard New Orleans And To Help Stabilise Baghdad.

American Author Mark Twain, While Viewed As Liberal And Non-judgmental, Did At Times Demonstrate Both These Characteristics. While His Reasons For Detesting The Christian Faith Are Unclear, They Seem To Have Been Profound And Deep-rooted. Having Lambasted The Founder Of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, In A Later Quote He Referred To The Book Of Mormon As "chloroform In Print."

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

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

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.

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

What Word Or Expression Do You Most Overuse? Re-reading A Collection Of My Stuff, I Was Rather Startled To Find That It Was 'perhaps.

It Is Not That There Are No Certainties, It Is That It Is An Absolute Certainty That There Are No Certainties.

Absolute Certainty

I Didn't Think Marilyn Monroe Was Beautiful. It Used To Worry Me. I Thought Maybe I'm Not Put Together Like The Other Chaps.

[i]n A Place With Absolutely No Private Or Personal Life, With The Incessant Worship Of A Mediocre Career-sadist As The Only Culture, Where All Citizens Are The Permanent Property Of The State, The Highest Form Of Pointlessness Has Been Achieved.

Once You Assume A Creator And A Plan, It Makes Us Objects In A Cruel Experiment Whereby We Are Created Sick And Commanded To Be Well.

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

I Think Being An Atheist Is Something You Are, Not Something You Do.

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.

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

Only A Humorless Tyrant Could Want A Perpetual Chanting Of Praises That, One Has No Choice But To Assume, Would Be The Innate Virtues And Splendors Furnished Him By His Creator, Infinite Regression, Drowned In Praise!

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.

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.

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

Many Of The Points Made By The Antiwar Movement Have Been Consciously Assimilated By The Pentagon And Its Lawyers And Advisers. Precision Weaponry Is Good In Itself, But Its Ability To Discriminate Is Improving And Will Continue To Improve. 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.

A Point, Like A Joke, Is A Terrible Thing To Miss.

Terrible Things

Jesus Makes Large Claims For His Heavenly Father But Never Mentions That His Mother Is Or Was A Virgin, And Is Repeatedly Very Rude And Coarse To Her When She Makes An Appearance.

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.

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.

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.

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

But You'll Notice, You Will Notice That Russia And China, Invariably At The United Nations, Move To Block American Action, To Repress Or Hem In Or Punish Other Kinds Of Outlaw. Who Stands Behind Mugabi At The United Nations? Russia And China Do. Who Tried Successfully To Prevent The United Nations From Speaking With One Voice On Its Most Signal Violation Of Its Resolutions, Iraq? Russia And China, Again. North Korea The Same. Burma The Same.

Those Of Us Who Are Most Genuinely Repelled By War And Violence Are Also Those Who Are Most Likely To Decide That Some Things, After All, Are Worth Fighting For.

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.

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

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.

All The Time, I've Felt That Life Is A Wager And That I Probably Was Getting More Out Of Leading A Bohemian Existence As A Writer Than I Would Have If I Didn't.

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.

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.

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

Three Words For Those Who Want To Put The Christ Back In Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock.

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

There Are People Who Cannot Forget, As Neither Do I, The Lesson Of The Years Of The Indochina War. Which Was, First, That The State Is Capable Of Being A Murderer. A Mass Murderer, And A Conspirator And A Liar.

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.

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

Quite Interesting, North Korea Is As If It's An Entirely Secular Dictatorship. In North Korea You Might Think That Was The Case Since It Has An Officially Communistic Ideology, But It's Not, It's The Most Religious State It's Possible To Imagine. It's Actually Two People Who Have Been Fused Into One, Maybe This Is Reminding You Of Something, There's The Father And There's The Son. It's One Short Of A Trinity.

If I Was To Interrupt This Article Every Few Sentences, Asking You Whether Or Not I Was Making A Good Impression On You, I Hope And Believe That You Would Think I Was A Servile Jerk. Yet This Is What Our Politicians Are Doing In Every Speech.

To Be In Opposition Is Not To Be A Nihilist. And There Is No Decent Or Charted Way Of Making A Living At It. It Is Something You Are, And Not Something You Do.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Love It When Muslims Go To War With Each Other, As I Do When The Christians Do, Because It Shows There's No Such Thing As The Christian World And The Islamic World. That's All Crap.

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.

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.

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

One Can Become Quite Used To The Specter Of The Eternal Footman, Like Some Lethal Old Bore Lurking In The Hallway At The End Of The Evening, Hoping For The Chance To Have A Word. And I Don't So Much Object To His Holding My Coat In That Marked Manner, As If Mutely Reminding Me That It's Time To Be On My Way. No, It's The Snickering That Gets Me Down.

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.

That Most Risky And Volatile Of All Things A Self-pitying Majority.

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.

You Can Only Have One Aim Per Debate.

One Of The Many Problems With The American Left Has Been Its Image As Something Rather Too Solemn, Mirthless, Herbivorous, Dull, Monochrome, Righteous, And Boring.

The Thing About Religion Is That It's The First And The Worst. The Worst Because It's The First.

In Some Ways I Feel Sorry For Racists And For Religious Fanatics, Because They So Much Miss The Point Of Being Human, And Deserve A Sort Of Pity. But Then I Harden My Heart, And Decide To Hate Them All The More, Because Of The Misery They Inflict And Because Of The Contemptible Excuses They Advance For Doing So.

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 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.

This Huge And Terrible Industry [the Slave Trade] Was Blessed By All Churches And For A Long Time Aroused Absolutely No Religious Protest. . . . In The Eighteenth Century, A Few Dissenting Mennonites And Quakers In America Began To Call For Abolition, As Did Some Freethinkers Like Thomas Paine.

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.

In One Way, Traveling Has Narrowed My Mind. What I Have Discovered Is Something Very Ordinary And Unexciting, Which Is That Humans Are The Same Everywhere And That The Degree Of Variation Between Members Of Our Species Is Very Slight. This Is Of Course An Encouraging Finding; It Helps Arm You Against News Programs Back Home That Show Seething Or Abject Masses Of Either Fanatical Or Torpid People. In Another Way It Is A Depressing Finding; The Sorts Of Things That Make People Quarrel And Make Them Stupid Are The Same Everywhere.

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.

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

I'd Always Somehow Felt Slightly As If I'd Been Born In The Wrong Country.

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

So Here We Have Found A Means Of A) Alienating Even The Most Flexible And Patient Palestinians; While B) Frustrating The Efforts Of The More Principled And Compromising Israelis; While C) Empowering And Financing Some Of The Creepiest Forces In American And Israeli Society; And D) Heaping Ordure On Our Own Secular Founding Documents. When Will The Justice Department And The Congress And The Supreme Court Become Aware Of This Huge And Rank Offense, Which Is Designed To Bring Us Ever Nearer To Holy War?

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.

I'm Very Happy By Myself - I'm Lucky In That Way - If I've Got Enough To Read And Something To Write About And A Bit Of Alcohol For Me To Add An Edge, Not To Dull It.

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.

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

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.

I Felt Clinton Represented The Worst Of The 1960s.

[religion] Attacks Us In Our Deepest Integrity - The Core Of Our Self-respect. Religion Says That We Would Not Know Right From Wrong, We Would Not Know An Evil, Wicked Act From A Decent Human Act Without Divine Permission, Without Divine Authority Or Without, Even Worse, Either The Fear Of A Divine Punishment Or The Hope Of A Divine Reward. It Strips Us Of The Right To Make Our Own Determination, As All Humans Always Have, About What Is And What Is Not A Right Human Action.

We Have Lived In A World Where The Discoveries Of Physics And Genetics Are Far More Awe-inspiring, As Well As Infinitely More Liberating, Than The Claims Of Any Religion.

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.

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

The Only Position That Leaves Me With No Cognitive Dissonance Is Atheism. It Is Not A Creed. Death Is Certain, Replacing Both The Siren-song Of Paradise And The Dread Of Hell. Life On This Earth, With All Its Mystery And Beauty And Pain, Is Then To Be Lived Far More Intensely: We Stumble And Get Up, We Are Sad, Confident, Insecure, Feel Loneliness And Joy And Love. There Is Nothing More; But I Want Nothing More.

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

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