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There Are, After All, Atheists Who Say They Wish The Fable Were True But Are Unable To Suspend The Requisite Disbelief, Or Who Have Relinquished Belief Only With Regret. To This I Reply: Who Wishes That There Was A Permanent, Unalterable Celestial Despotism That Subjected Us To Continual Surveillance And Could Convict Us Of Thought-crime, And Who Regarded Us As Its Private Property Even After We Died? How Happy We Ought To Be, At The Reflection That There Exists Not A Shred Of Respectable Evidence To Support Such A Horrible Hypothesis.

-Christopher Hitchens

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There Are, After All,

Christopher Hitchens

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There Are, After All, Atheists Who Say They Wish The Fable Were True But Are Unable To Suspend The Requisite Disbelief, Or Who Have Relinquished Belief Only With Regret. To This I Reply: Who Wishes That There Was A Permanent, Unalterable Celestial Despotism That Subjected Us To Continual Surveillance And Could Convict Us Of Thought-crime, And Who Regarded Us As Its Private Property Even After We Died? How Happy We Ought To Be, At The Reflection That There Exists Not A Shred Of Respectable Evidence To Support Such A Horrible Hypothesis.

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A Faction Willing To Take The Risks Of Making War On The Ossified Status Quo In The Middle East Can Be Described As Many Things, But Not As Conservative.

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

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

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

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.

I Could Be Spending Time Looking Through A Telescope Or Into A Microscope And Finding Out The Most Extraordinary, Wonderful Things, But People Say Faith Can Move Mountains. Faith In What, By The Way? You Haven't Said.

I Am, I Hope, Never Offensive By Accident.

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.

Margaret Thatcher Has Shown That There Is Power And Dignity To Be Won By Defying The Status Quo And The Majority Rather Than By Adapting To Them. If The British Left, Which She Froze Into Immobility Like Medusa, Could Bring Itself To Learn From This, Then We Might Not Have To Look Upon Her Like Again.

It's The Professional Deformation Of Many Writers, And Has Ruined Not A Few. (i Remember Kingsley Amis, Himself No Slouch, Saying That He Could Tell On What Page Of The Novel Paul Scott Had Reached For The Bottle And Thrown Caution To The Winds.)

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

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

Absolute Certainty

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

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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Religion Attacks Us In Our Deepest Integrity By Saying We Wouldn't Be Able To Make A Moral Decision Without It.

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Scum Of The Earth

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I'm Terrified Of Losing My Voice.

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Eternal Vigilance

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

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

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I'm An Atheist. I'm Not Neutral About Religion, I'm Hostile To It. I Think It Is A Positively Bad Idea, Not Just A False One. And I Mean Not Just Organized Religion, But Religious Belief Itself.

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How Dismal It Is To See Present Day Americans Yearning For The Very Orthodoxy That Their Country Was Founded To Escape.

(howard) Dean Is A Raving Nut Bag...a Raving, Sinister, Demagogic Nutbag...i And A Few Other People Saw That He Should Be Destroyed.

All Of Life Is A Wager

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What I Used To Say To People, When I Was Much More Engagé Myself, Is That You Can't Be Apolitical. It Will Come And Get You. It's Not That You Shouldn't Be Neutral. It's That You Won't Be Able To Stay Neutral.

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

I Vote And I Do Jury Duty.

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

Consensus Building

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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.

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I Sympathize Afresh With The Mighty Voltaire Who, When Badgered On His Deathbed And Urged To Renounce The Devil, Murmured That This Was No Time To Be Making Enemies.

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

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.

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

The Most Educated Person In The World Now Has To Admit-- I Shall Not Say Confess-- That He Or She Knows Less And Less But At Least Knows Less And Less About More And More.

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

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 Position That Leaves Me With No Cognitive Dissonance Is Atheism.

Cognitive Dissonance

I Don’t Have A Body, I Am A Body.

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

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.

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

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.

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

It Is Only Those Who Hope To Transform Human Beings Who End Up By Burning Them, Like The Waste Product Of A Failed Experiment.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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A Good Day Is One Where I Can Not Just Read A Book, But Write A Review Of It. Maybe Today I'll Be Able To Do That. I Get For Some Reason Somewhat Stronger When The Sun Starts To Go Down. Dusk Is A Good Time For Me. I'm Crepuscular.

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

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.

There Is A Reason For The Affected Profession Of " Anarchist Sympathies" Among Tories And Grandees, And Of " Libertarian Principles" By Hobbesian Yahoos Of The Right. Among The Former, One Sees The Upholding Of The View That A Gentleman's Business And Property Are His Own, And None Of The Government's. Among The Latter, A Distaste For Democracy, For Taxation, And For The Need To Consult Others About The Planet.

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

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.

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.

In Modern Greek History, There Is A Close Relationship Between National Humiliation And Political Radicalization.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The Governor Of Texas, Who, When Asked If The Bible Should Also Be Taught In Spanish, Replied That 'if English Was Good Enough For Jesus, Then It's Good Enough For Me.

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.

If I Was Told To Sacrifice Something To Prove My Devotion To God, If I Was Told To Do What All Monotheists Are Told To Do And Admire The Man Who Said 'yes I'll Gut My Kid To Show My Love Of God.'

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

My Own View Is That This Planet Is Used As A Penal Colony, Lunatic Asylum And Dumping Ground By A Superior Civilisation, To Get Rid Of The Undesirable And Unfit. I Can't Prove It, But You Can't Disprove It Either.

Lunatic Asylums

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

We Know That Our Life Is Essentially Tragic. I'm Absolutely Not For Handing Over That Very Important Department Of Our Psyche To Those Who Say, "why Didn't You Say So Before? God Has A Plan For You In Mind."

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

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.

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

Will An Iraq War Make Our Al Qaeda Problem Worse? Not Likely.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

My Political Life Has Been Informed By The View That If There Was Any Truth To Religion There Wouldn't Really Be Any Need For Politics.

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

Even If I Accepted That Jesus - Like Almost Every Other Prophet On Record - Was Born Of A Virgin, I Cannot Think That This Proves The Divinity Of His Father Or The Truth Of His Teachings. The Same Would Be True If I Accepted That He Had Been Resurrected.

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

Though It Is True We Are The Highest And Smartest Animals, Ospreys Have Eyes We Have Calculated To Be Sixty Times More Powerful And Sophisticated Than Our Own And That Blindness, Often Caused By Microscopic Parasites That Are Themselves Miracles Of Ingenuity, Is One Of The Oldest And Most Tragic Disorders Known To Man. And Why Award The Superior Eye (or In The Case Of Cat Or Bat, Also The Ear) To The Inferior Species.

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.

I Mean, What Would I Be Doing If I Couldn't Write? But That Fortunately Hasn't Proved To Be The Case And I Can Read Any Day. I Still Read A Lot, And I Can Write Any Day, But Much More Slowly And Fewer Words.

In Order To Terminate A Pregnancy, You Have To Still A Heartbeat, Switch Off A Developing Brain.

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

You Can't Have Occupation And Human Rights.

It Was Not For The Sake Of Oil That The Risky Decision To Cease This Corrupt Coexistence Was Made. But At Least Now The Iraqi People Have A Chance Of Controlling Their Own Main Resource, And It Will Be Our Task To Ensure That The Funding And Revenue Are Transparent Instead Of Opaque.

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.

[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.

There Are, After All, Atheists Who Say They Wish The Fable Were True But Are Unable To Suspend The Requisite Disbelief, Or Who Have Relinquished Belief Only With Regret. To This I Reply: Who Wishes That There Was A Permanent, Unalterable Celestial Despotism That Subjected Us To Continual Surveillance And Could Convict Us Of Thought-crime, And Who Regarded Us As Its Private Property Even After We Died? How Happy We Ought To Be, At The Reflection That There Exists Not A Shred Of Respectable Evidence To Support Such A Horrible Hypothesis.

"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.

For A Lot Of People, Their First Love Is What They'll Always Remember. For Me It's Always Been The First Hate, And I Think That Hatred, Though It Provides Often Rather Junky Energy, Is A Terrific Way Of Getting You Out Of Bed In The Morning And Keeping You Going.

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.

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

I Try To Deny Myself Any Illusions Or Delusions, And I Think That This Perhaps Entitles Me To Try And Deny The Same To Others, At Least As Long As They Refuse To Keep Their Fantasies To Themselves.

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

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

I Can't Compose Or Play Music; I'm Not That Fortunate. But I Can Write And I Can Talk And Sometimes When I'm Doing Either Of These Things I Realize That I've Written A Sentence Or Uttered A Thought That I Didn't Absolutely Know I Had In Me... Until I Saw It On The Page Or Heard Myself Say It.

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.

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.

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

It's Probably A Merciful Thing That Pain Is Impossible To Describe From Memory

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.

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.

Ronald Reagan Said That He Sought A "star Wars" Defense Only In Order To Share The Technology With The Tyrants Of The U.s.s.r.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[today's Left] Would Have Left Us With Slobodan Milosevic In Power, Bosnia Ethnically Cleansed, Kosovo Part Of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan Under The Taliban, And Iraq The Property Of A Psychopathic Crime Family. Now, I'm Sorry To Say, I've No Patience With That Leftist Mentality Anymore.

A Good Liar Must Have A Good Memory.

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