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The Crucial Distinction Between Systems...was No Longer Ideological. The Main Political Difference Was Between Those Who Did, And Those Who Did Not, Believe That The Citizen Could -- Or Should -- Be The Property Of The State.

-Christopher Hitchens

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The Crucial Distinction Between

Christopher Hitchens

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The Crucial Distinction Between Systems...was No Longer Ideological. The Main Political Difference Was Between Those Who Did, And Those Who Did Not, Believe That The Citizen Could -- Or Should -- Be The Property Of The State.

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Political Differences

More From Christopher Hitchens

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

It Ought To Be An Offense To Be Excruciating And Unfunny In Circumstances Where Your Audience Is Almost Morally Obliged To Enthuse.

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

There's No Hell Mentioned In The Old Testament. The Punishment Of The Dead Is Not Specified There. It's Only With Gentle Jesus, Meek And Mild, That The Idea Of Eternal Torture For Minor Transgressions Is Introduced.

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.

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.

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.”

Well, I'll Put It This Way: You Can Certainly Say Belief In God Makes People Behave Worse. That Can Be Proved Beyond A Doubt.

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.

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

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

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.

To Reflect Upon The Event Horizon Is A Great Deal More Awe-inspiring Than A Burning Bush Or A Wooden Statue That Weeps Or Pees Or Bleeds.

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

Consensus Building

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.

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.

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

The 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.

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.

As The Cleansing Ocean Closes Over Bin Laden's Carcass, May The Earth Lie Lightly On The Countless Graves Of Those He Sentenced Without Compunction To Be Burned Alive Or Dismembered In The Street.

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

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.

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.

In A Public Dialogue With Salman In London He [edward Said] Had Once Described The Palestinian Plight As One Where His People, Expelled And Dispossessed By Jewish Victors, Were In The Unique Historical Position Of Being 'the Victims Of The Victims': There Was Something Quasi-christian, I Thought, In The Apparent Humility Of That Statement.

It Must Be Obvious To Anyone Who Can Think At All That The Charges Against The Hussein Regime Are, As Concerns Arsenals Of Genocidal Weaponry, True.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I'm Dying, But So Are You

At The Evident Risk Of Seeming Ridiculous, I Want To Begin By Saying That I Have Tried For Much Of My Life To Write As If I Was Composing My Sentences To Be Read Posthumously. I Hope This Isn't Too Melodramatic Or Self-centred A Way Of Saying That I Attempt To Write As If I Did Not Care What Reviewers Said, What Peers Thought, Or What Prevailing Opinions May Be.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

Cheap Booze Is A False Economy.

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.

Human Society Is Inconceivable Unless Words Are To Some Extent Bonds.

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

If Someone Tells Me That I've Hurt Their Feelings I'm Still Waiting To Hear What Your Point Is.

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 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.

The One Unforgivable Sin Is To Be Boring.

Unforgivable Sin

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

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.

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

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.

When I Am At Home, I Never Go Near The Synagogue Unless, Say, There Is A Bar Or Bat Mitzvah Involving The Children Of Friends. But When I Am Traveling, In A Country Where Jewish Life Is Scarce Or Endangered, I Often Make A Visit To The Shul.

Ronald Reagan Used To Alarm Other Constituencies By Speaking Freely About The End Times Foreshadowed In The Bible.

Indeed, It's Futile To Try And Use Holy Scripture To Support Any Political Position. I Deeply Distrust Anyone Who Does. Just Look At What An Islamic Republic Is Like.

When I Meet People Who Say - Which They Do All Of The Time - 'i Must Just Tell You, My Great Aunt Had Cancer Of The Elbow And The Doctors Gave Her 10 Seconds To Live, But Last I Heard She Was Climbing Mount Everest,' And So Forth, I Switch Off Quite Early.

Religion Fosters Servility And Solipsism.

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.

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.

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

Everything About Christianity Is Contained In The Pathetic Image Of 'the Flock.

To Be In Opposition Is Not To Be A Nihilist.

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.

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.

I Say 'merry Christmas' To People I Don't Know, Or To People I Know Are Christians. I Say 'happy Hanukkah' To People I Know To Be Or Suspect To Be Jewish. And I Don't Say 'happy Kwanzaa,' Because I Think African Americans Get Enough Insults All Year Round.

Merry Christmas

Literature, Not Scripture, Sustains The Mind And - Since There Is No Other Metaphor - Also The Soul.

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.

It's Surprising To Me How Many Of My Friends Send Christmas Cards, Or Holiday Cards, Including My Atheist And Secular Friends.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Bible May, Indeed Does, Contain A Warrant For Trafficking In Humans, For Ethnic Cleansing, For Slavery, For Bride-price, And For Indiscriminate Massacre, But We Are Not Bound By Any Of It Because It Was Put Together By Crude, Uncultured Human Mammals.

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

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.

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

I Felt Clinton Represented The Worst Of The 1960s.

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.

Today I Want To Puke When I Hear The Word 'radical' Applied So Slothfully And Stupidly To Islamist Murderers; The Most Plainly Reactionary People In The World.

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

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.

You Can't Have Occupation And Human Rights.

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

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.

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

The Penalty For Getting Mugged In An American City And Losing Your Id Is That You Can't Fly Home.

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.

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.

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.

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 Could Not Do What I Do, And Teach A Class, And Never Miss A Deadline, Never Be Late For Anything If I Was A Lush, Ok? I Would Really Love To Read A Piece That Said, 'he Is Not A Lush.' That Would Be Fabulous, It Would Be A First, I Could Show It To People And Say, 'look!'

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

Terrible Things

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

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

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.

Philosophy Begins Where Religion Ends, Just As By Analogy Chemistry Begins Where Alchemy Runs Out, And Astronomy Takes The Place Of Astrology.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

When You Fall Ill, People Send You Cds. Very Often, In My Experience, These Are By Leonard Cohen

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.

Religion Looks Forward To The Destruction Of The World.... Perhaps Half Aware That Its Unsupported Arguments Are Not Entirely Persuasive, And Perhaps Uneasy About Its Own Greedy Accumulation Of Temporal Power And Wealth, Religion Has Never Ceased To Proclaim The Apocalypse And The Day Of Judgment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Who Are Your Favourite Heroines In Real Life? The Women Of Afghanistan, Iraq, And Iran Who Risk Their Lives And Their Beauty To Defy The Foulness Of Theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali And Azar Nafisi As Their Ideal Feminine Model.

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.

We Know How To Think. We Know How To Laugh. We Know We're Going To Die, Which Gives Us A Lot To Think About, And We Have A Need For, What I Would Call, "the Transcendent" Or "the Numinous" Or Even "the Ecstatic" That Comes Out In Love And Music, Poetry, And Landscape. I Wouldn't Trust Anyone Who Didn't Respond To Things Of That Sort.

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.

[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.

No Child's Behind Left.

[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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The Iranian People Were Converted To Islam Not Very Much Longer After The Conquest Of The Arab World By Islam, But They Refused To Adopt The Arabic Language, And It's A Great Point Of Pride To Them That Persian Culture And The Persian Language And Persian Literature Survived The Conversion To Islam. And The Conversion To Islam Also Was For Most Of Them Not The Sunni Majority Form, But The Shia One. So There's A Great Discrepancy Between Iranian Society And Many Other Of What We Think Of As Arab Muslim States And Systems.

Discrepancies Between

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

When You Consider How Many Millions Of Workdays Begin With Hangovers Great And Small, It Is Mildly surprising To Find How Few Real Descriptions Of The Experience Our Literature Can Boast.

Knowing That We Are Primates, I Think, Is A Fascinating Discovery, And A Very Interesting And Rather Cheering One.

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'.

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

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

One Of The Many Dreadful Aspects Of The Kennedy 'legacy' Is The Now-unbreakable Grip Of Celebrity Politics, Image-doctoring, Stage Management, And "torch-passing" Rhetoric In General.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 Finest Fury Is The Most Controlled.

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.

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

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

I Can’t Hope To Convey The Full Effect Of The Embraces And Avowals, But I Can Perhaps Offer A Crumb Of Counsel. If There Is Anybody Known To You Who Might Benefit From A Letter Or A Visit, Do Not On Any Account Postpone The Writing Or The Making Of It. The Difference Made Will Almost Certainly Be More Than You Have Calculated

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A Lot Of People, Because Of My Contempt For The False Consolations Of Religion, Think Of Me As A Symbolic Public Opponent Of That In Extremis. And Sometimes That Makes Me Feel A Bit Alarmed, To Be The Repository Of Other People's Hope.

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.

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.

A Wide And Vague Impression Exists That So-called Eastern Religion Is More Contemplative, Innocuous, And Humane Than The Proselytizing Monotheisms Of The West. Don't Believe A Word Of This: Try Asking The Children Of Indochina Who Were Dumped By Their Parents For Inherited Deformities That Were Attributed To Sins In A Previous 'life.

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

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.

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

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 ?

Religion Is Compulsory In English Schools, You Know.

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.

What Is Your Idea Of Earthly Happiness? To Be Vindicated In My Own Lifetime.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Owners Of Dogs Will Have Noticed That, If You Provide Them With Food And Water And Shelter And Affection, They Will Think You Are God. Whereas Owners Of Cats Are Compelled To Realize That, If You Provide Them With Food And Water And Affection, They Draw The Conclusion That They Are God.

If We Have Free Will, By Definition We Cannot Be Granted It. We Can't Be Given It. My [-audio-recording-distorted-] Paradox States That 'of Course We Have Free Will, We Have No Choice.' To Say That It's A Gift Is To Negate The Whole Concept Of Free Will On Its Face. So, If That Isn't Self-evident, I Can't Think Of Anything That Would Meet The Definition Of Being Self-evident.

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.

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.

If I Could Do Just One Thing, It Would Be To Dissociate Faith From Virtue, Now And For Good, And To Expose It For What It Is, A Servile Weakness, A Refuge In Cowardice, And A Willingness To Follow, With Credulity, People Who Are In The Highest Degree Unscrupulous.

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

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

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

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

I, For One, Will Not Have [the Vietcong] Insulted By Any Comparison To The Forces Of Zarqawi, The Fedayeen Saddam, And The Criminal Underworld Now Arrayed Against Us. These Depraved Elements Are The Iraqi Khmer Rouge.

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

Many Writers, Especially Male Ones, Have Told Us That It Is The Decease Of The Father Which Opens The Prospect Of One's Own End, And Affords An Unobstructed View Of The Undug But Awaiting Grave That Says 'you're Next.' Unfilial As This May Seem, That Was Not At All So In My Own Case. It Was Only When I Watched Alexander [my Own Son] Being Born That I Knew At Once That My Own Funeral Director Had Very Suddenly, But Quite Unmistakably, Stepped Onto The Stage. I Was Surprised By How Calmly I Took This, But Also By How Reluctant I Was To Mention It To My Male Contemporaries.

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.

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.

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