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Very Often The Test Of One's Allegiance To A Cause Or To A People Is Precisely The Willingness To Stay The Course When Things Are Boring, To Run The Risk Of Repeating An Old Argument Just One More Time, Or Of Going One More Round With A Hostile Or (much Worse) Indifferent Audience.
-Christopher Hitchens
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Very Often The Test

Christopher Hitchens
Very Often The Test Of One's Allegiance To A Cause Or To A People Is Precisely The Willingness To Stay The Course When Things Are Boring, To Run The Risk Of Repeating An Old Argument Just One More Time, Or Of Going One More Round With A Hostile Or (much Worse) Indifferent Audience.
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Topic
Running
People
Risk
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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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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.
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I Don't Think The Soul Is Immortal, Or At Least Not Immortal In Individuals, But It May Be Immortal As An Aspect Of The Human Personality Because When I Talk About What Literature Nourishes, It Would Be Silly Of Me Or Reductionist To Say That It Nourishes The Brain.
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We Have No Proof That Socrates Ever Existed. We Only Know From Witnesses To His Life That He Did. Like Jesus, He Never Wrote Anything Down. It Doesn't Matter To Me Whether He Did Or Not Exist Because We Have His Teachings, His Method Of Thinking, And His Extreme Intellectual And Moral Courage.
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If The Qur'an Was The Word Of God, It Had Been Dictated On A Very Bad Day.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Russians Are Going To Be Expansionist Whether We [usa] Provoke Them To It Or Not. Russians Keep Saying That We're Trying To Encircle Them. In What Sense Does The Independence Of Kosovo, A Land-locked Province, Former Yugoslavia, With No Common Border With Russia, Threaten Russia With Encirclement? This Is Insulting. In What Sense Does The Independence Of Georgia Constitute An Encirclement? What We Are Facing, And We May As Well Give It Its Right Name, Is What I Called It Earlier, A Chauvinistic, Theocratic In Part, Xenophobic Russian Imperialism.
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I Don't Think It's Possible To Have A Sense Of Tragedy Without Having A Sense Of Humor.
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I Became A Journalist Partly So That I Wouldn't Ever Have To Rely On The Press For My Information.
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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.
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The Brilliant Schiller Was Wrong In His Joan Of Arc When He Said Against Stupidity The Gods Themselves Contend In Vain. It Is Actually By Means Of The Gods That We Make Our Stupidity And Gullibility Into Something Ineffable.
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It's Called Faith Because It's Not Knowledge.
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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.
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I Think Religion Should Be Treated With Ridicule, Hatred And Contempt, And I Claim That Right.
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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.
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It Is Only Those Who Hope To Transform Human Beings Who End Up By Burning Them, Like The Waste Product Of A Failed Experiment.
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Culture
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Thinking
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At Oxford One Was Positively Encouraged To Take Wine During Tutorials. The Tongue Must Be Untied.
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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.
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I've Noticed That The More Flooding There Is, The More Bullshit Gets Talked. I Mean It Was Very Noticeable In The Asian Tsumai. It Happened Around Christmas-new Year. The Muslims Of Sri Lanka Said 'we Knew This Would Happen Because The Christians Were Using Alcohol For Their Christmas Celebrations.' The Buddhists Said 'we Knew This Would Happen Because Of The Horrible Muslim Slaughter Practices.' It's Amazing To See How Apocalypse Or Catastrophe Makes People Behave Primitively.
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Country
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Irrelevance
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.
Names
Relief
Speak
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.
Struggle
Sleep
Anxiety
You Don't Say 'they All Do It' Unless You Know You've Been Doing It Too.
Knows
Everything Everyone Thinks They Know About [mother Teresa] Is False. It Must Be The Single Most Successful Emotional Con Job Of The Twentieth Century.
Mother
Jobs
Successful
In One Was, I Suppose, I Have Been "in Denial" For Some Time, Knowingly Burning The Candle At Both Ends And Finding That It Often Gives A Lovely Light. But For Precisely This Reason, I Can't See Myself Smiting My Brow With Shock Or Hear Myself Whining About How It's All So Unfair: I Have Been Taunting The Reaper Into Taking A Free Scythe In My Direction And Have Now Succumbed To Something So Predictable And Banal That It Bores Even Me.
Light
Giving
Lovely
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.
Religious
Views
People
That Most Risky And Volatile Of All Things A Self-pitying Majority.
Self
Majority
All Things
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.
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Thinking
Long
I Think Being An Atheist Is Something You Are, Not Something You Do.
Atheist
Thinking
Nothing Optional -- From Homosexuality To Adultery -- Is Ever Made Punishable Unless Those Who Do The Prohibiting (and Exact The Fierce Punishment) Have A Repressed Desire To Participate.
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Desire
Fierce
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.
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Insomnia
Insecurity
The Prostitute Journalist Is A Familiar And Well-understood Figure In The Middle East, And Saddam Hussein's Regime Made Lavish Use Of The Buyability Of The Regional Press. Now We, Too, Have Hired That Clapped-out Old Floozy, Miss Rosie Scenario, And Sent Her Whoring Through The Streets.
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Middle East
Use
Only The Force Of American Arms, Or The Extremely Credible Threat Of That Force, Can Bring A Fresh Face To Power.
Arms
Faces
Force
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.
Cancer
Aunt
Doctors
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.
Children
Childhood
Social
For Some Reason, Which I Believe I Can Guess, The Churches/mosques Want Control Of People When Or While They Are The Most Vulnerable Or Suggestible. If They Can't Get Them In School, Then They Get Them When They Are Hungry, Or Frightened, Or Ill, Or Homeless, Or Unemployed. Same Difference. Here's Your Gruel, And Here's A Tract.
Believe
School
Differences
I Have Quite A Decent Constitution In Spite Of All My Abuse Of It And My Advanced Years. I'm Still Quite Robust.
Years
Abuse
Constitution
I Think I Write In A Fairly Self-confident Manner.
Writing
Thinking
Self
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.
Oil
People
Decision
It Is Exactly The Fear Of Revenge That Motivates The Deepest Crimes, From The Killing Of The Enemy's Children Lest They Grow Up To Play Their Own Part, To The Erasure Of The Enemy's Graveyards And Holy Places So That His Hated Name Can Be Forgotten.
Children
Growing Up
Revenge
I Have Tried For Much Of My Life To Write As If I Was Composing My Sentences To Be Read Posthumously.
Writing
Composing
Sentences
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.
Way
Nihilist
Decent
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.
Laughing
Worry
Gone
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.
Men
Drunk
Responsible
The Concept Of Loneliness And Exile And Self-sufficiency Continually Bucks Me Up.
Loneliness
Self
Bucks
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.
Daughter
War
Iraq
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.
Giving Up
Believe
Religion
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.'
Kids
Sacrifice
Men
The Whole Reason For The Success Of Dr. King's Civil-rights Movement Was That It Was Not A Movement For Itself. The Civil-rights Movement Understood Very Clearly, And Stated Very Beautifully, That It Was A Question Of Humanism, Not A Sectarian Movement At All.
Kings
Rights
Drs
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.
Moving
People
Mountain
If Religious Instruction Were Not Allowed Until The Child Had Attained The Age Of Reason, We Would Be Living In A Quite Different World.
Religious
Children
Religion
Islam Is At Once The Most And The Least Interesting Of The World's Monotheisms. It Builds Upon Its Primitive Jewish And Christian Predecessors, Selecting A Chunk Here And A Shard There, And Thus If These Fall, It Partly Falls Also.
Christian
Fall
Interesting
Ever Since I Discovered That My God Given Male Member Was Going To Give Me No Peace, I Decided To Give It No Rest In Return.
Giving
Males
Return
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.
Atheist
World
This World
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.
Thinking
Opinion
Rate
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.
Cancer
Long
People
Friends Call Me Hitch. Maybe It Can Be Turned Into A 900-phone Number. People Would Pay To Talk To Me.
Phones
Numbers
People
You Can Only Have One Aim Per Debate.
Debate
Aim
The Amazing Fact Is That America Is Founded On A Document. It's A Work In Progress. It Can Be Tested By Each Generation.
America
Progress
Generations
As Well As Being A Vulgar Producer Of Her Own Spectacle, And An Embarrassment To Her Family, Cindy Sheehan Is At Best A Shifty Fantasist.
Embarrassment
Producers
Vulgar
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 Visiting Today's Iran, I Was Delighted To Find That Citizens Made A Point Of Defying The Clerical Ban On Booze, Keeping It In Their Homes For Visitors Even If They Didn't Particularly Take To It Themselves, And Bootlegging It With Great Brio And Ingenuity. These Small Revolutions Affirm The Human.
Inspiration
Reading
Home
Name A Moral Statement Or Action, Uttered Or Performed By A Religious Person That Could Not Have Been Uttered Or Performed By An Unbeliever.
Religious
Names
Action
Will An Iraq War Make Our Al Qaeda Problem Worse? Not Likely.
War
Iraq
Als
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.
Atheist
Science
Ideas
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.
Attitude
Real
Campaigns
I'm Terrified Of Losing My Voice.
Voice
Losing
Terrified
Demands That You Believe The Impossible Do Not Lead To Peaceful Outcomes.
Believe
Peaceful
Demand
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.
Ideas
Infancy Is
Matter
Thanks To The Telescope And The Microscope, Religion No Longer Offers An Explanation For Anything Important.
Religion
Atheism
Important
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.
Mother
Jesus
Father
The Reading Public Isn't Born That Doesn't Think Foreigners Are Either Funny Or Faintly Sinister.
Reading
Thinking
Born
A Life That Partakes Even A Little Of Friendship, Love, Irony, Humor, Parenthood, Literature, And Music, And The Chance To Take Part In Battles For The Liberation Of Others Cannot Be Called 'meaningless'.
Battle
Friendship Love
Literature
How Ya Doin'?' I Always Think, What Kind Of A Question Is That?, And I Always Reply, 'a Bit Early To Tell.
Thinking
Kind
Bits
Hannah Arendt In Her Study Of Totalitarianism Borrowed From Immanuel Kant The Concept Of Radical Evil, Of Evil That's So Evil That In The End It Destroys Itself, It's So Committed To Evil And It's So Committed To Hatred And Cruelty That It Becomes Suicidal. My Definition Of It Is The Surplus Value That's Generated By Totalitarianism. It Means You Do More Violence, More Cruelty Than You Absolutely Have To To Stay In Power.
Suicidal
Mean
Evil
I Had Become Too Accustomed To The Pseudo-left New Style, Whereby If Your Opponent Thought He Had Identified Your Lowest Possible Motive, He Was Quite Certain That He Had Isolated The Only Real One. This Vulgar Method, Which Is Now The Norm And The Standard In Much Non-left Journalism As Well, Is Designed To Have The Effect Of Making Any Noisy Moron Into A Master Analyst.
Real
Style
Opponents
The True Essence Of A Dictatorship Is In Fact Not Its Regularity But Its Unpredictability And Caprice; Those Who Live Under It Must Never Be Able To Relax, Must Never Be Quite Sure If They Have Followed The Rules Correctly Or Not.
Essence
Relax
Able
Religion Is Not Just Incongruent With Morality, But In Essential Ways Incompatible With It.
Essentials
Way
Morality
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.
Running
Science
Important
[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.
Determination
Integrity
Self
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.
Healthy
Disease
Decline
It Is A Horrible Idea That There Is Somebody Who Owns Us, Who Makes Us, Who Supervises Us - Waking And Sleeping - Who Knows Our Thoughts, Who Can Convict Us Of Thought Crime, Thought Crime, Just For What We Think, Who Can Judge Us While We Sleep For Things That Might Occur To Us In Our Dreams, Who Can Create Us Sick, As Apparently We Are - And Then Order Us, On Pain Of Eternal Torture To Be Well Again. To Demand This, To Wish This To Be True Is To Wish To Live As An Abject Slave.
Dream
Pain
Sleep
To Be The Father Of Growing Daughters Is To Understand Something Of What Yeats Evokes With His Imperishable Phrase 'terrible Beauty.' Nothing Can Make One So Happily Exhilarated Or So Frightened: It's A Solid Lesson In The Limitations Of Self To Realize That Your Heart Is Running Around Inside Someone Else's Body. It Also Makes Me Quite Astonishingly Calm At The Thought Of Death: I Know Whom I Would Die To Protect And I Also Understand That Nobody But A Lugubrious Serf Can Possibly Wish For A Father Who Never Goes Away.
Daughter
Running
Atheist
I Suppose That One Reason I Have Always Detested Religion Is Its Sly Tendency To Insinuate The Idea That The Universe Is Designed With 'you' In Mind Or, Even Worse, That There Is A Divine Plan Into Which One Fits Whether One Knows It Or Not. This Kind Of Modesty Is Too Arrogant For Me.
Atheist
Ideas
Mind
I've Been Writing A Lot About A New Form Of Russian Imperialism. Actually, Russian Orthodox Imperialism. It's Very Little Remarked That The Cement, The Political, Ideological Cement Of The Russian Regime Now, Communism Having Collapsed And Imploded, Is Increasingly A Confessional One.
Writing
Political
Littles
It's Considered Acceptable In Our Culture To Approach Perfect Strangers, As Often Or Not Who May Be In Extremis, And Evangelise. I Don't See Why That's Considered A Normal Thing.
Perfect
May
Normal
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.
Views
Political
Needs
Well Look, I Mean, I Think That Prayer And Holy Water, And Things Like That Are All Fine. They Don't Do Any Good, But They Don't Necessarily Do Any Harm. It's Touching To Be Thought Of In That Way. It Makes Up For Those Who Tell Me That I've Got My Just Desserts.
Prayer
Mean
Thinking
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.
Religious
Father
Son
The People Who Tend To Raise Antiwar Slogans Will Do So Generally When It's American Or British Interests Involved.
People
British
Interest
What If I Pulled Through And The Pious Faction Contentedly Claimed That Their Prayers Had Been Answered? That Would Somehow Be Irritating.
Prayer
What If
Factions
The One Unforgivable Sin Is To Be Boring.
Unforgivable Sin
Sin
Boring
The Violence In The Bible Is Appalling.
Violence
In The Early Days Of The December That My Father Was To Die, My Younger Brother Brought Me The News That I Was A Jew. I Was Then A Transplanted Englishman In America, Married, With One Son And, Though Unconsoled By Any Religion, A Nonbelieving Member Of Two Christian Churches. On Hearing The Tidings, I Was Pleased To Find That I Was Pleased.
Christian
Brother
Atheist
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.
Government
Self
Way
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.
Views
Your Side
People
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.
Memories
Book
Yesterday
The Worst Days Are When You Feel Foggy In The Head - Chemo-brain They Call It. It's Awful Because You Feel Boring. As Well As Bored. And Stupid. And Resigned.
Stupid
Bored
Brain
I Can Never Quite Decide Whether The Anti-columbus Movement Is Merely Risible Or Faintly Sinister. It Is Sinister, Though, Because It Is An Ignorant Celebration Of Stasis And Backwardness, With An Unpleasant Tinge Of Self-hatred.
Self
Hatred
Ignorant
The Essence Of The Independent Mind Lies Not In What It Thinks, But In How It Thinks.
Lying
Independent
Thinking
It [defending Salmon Rushdie] Was, If I Can Phrase It Like This, A Matter Of Everything I Hated Versus Everything I Loved. In The Hate Column: Dictatorship, Religion, Stupidity, Demagogy, Censorship, Bullying And Intimidation. In The Love Column: Literature, Irony, Humor, The Individual And The Defense Of Free Expression.
Bullying
Hate
Expression
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.
Thinking
Hussein
Regimes
The Struggle For A Free Intelligence Has Always Been A Struggle Between The Ironic And The Literal Mind.
Struggle
Ironic
Mind
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.)
Writing
Wind
Bottles
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?
War
Mean
Justice
The Rich World Likes And Wishes To Believe That Someone, Somewhere, Is Doing Something For The Third World. For This Reason, It Does Not Inquire Too Closely Into The Motives Or Practices Of Anyone Who Fulfills, However Vicariously, This Mandate.
Believe
Practice
Wish
Beware The Irrational, However Seductive. Shun The 'transcendent' And All Who Invite You To Subordinate Or Annihilate Yourself. Distrust Compassion; Prefer Dignity For Yourself And Others. Don't Be Afraid To Be Thought Arrogant Or Selfish. Picture All Experts As If They Were Mammals. 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. Suspect Your Own Motives, And All Excuses. Do Not Live For Others Any More Than You Would Expect Others To Live For You.
Courage
Selfish
Science
My Father Had Died, And Very Swiftly, Too, Of Cancer Of The Esophagus. He Was 79. I Am 61. In Whatever Kind Of A 'race' Life May Be, I Have Very Abruptly Become A Finalist.
Cancer
Father
Race
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.
Creativity
Thinking
Creative
Don't Swallow Your Moral Code In Tablet Form.
Tablets
Moral
Form
To Remember Friendship Is To Recall Those Conversations That It Seemed A Sin To Break Off
Break Off
Remember
Sin
I Don't Think Souls Or Bodies Can Be Changed By Incantation. Or Anything Else By The Way.
Thinking
Soul
Body
What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Be Dismissed Without Evidence.
Inspirational
Wisdom
Atheist
The Best Blended Scotch In The History Of The World - Which Was Also The Favourite Drink Of The Iraqi Baath Party, As It Still Is Of The Palestinian Authority And The Libyan Dictatorship And Large Branches Of The Saudi Arabian Royal Family - Is Johnnie Walker Black. Breakfast Of Champions, Accept No Substitute.
Party
Scotch
Champion
Religion, It Is True, Still Possesses The Huge If Cumbersome And Unwieldy Advantage Of Having Come First.
Religion
Firsts
Advantage
Terrorism Is The Tactic Of Demanding The Impossible, And Demanding It At Gunpoint.
Tactics
Impossible
Terrorism
In The Ordinary Moral Universe, The Good Will Do The Best They Can, The Worst Will Do The Worst They Can, But If You Want To Make Good People Do Wicked Things, You’ll Need Religion.
People
Religion
Wicked
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.
Morning
Hate
First Love
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.
Nice
Book
Writing
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
Writing
Differences
Benefits
If You Gave [jerry] Falwell An Enema He Could Be Buried In A Matchbox.
Atheist
Religion
Buried
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.
Death
Eye
Looks
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.
Democracy
Saint
Roles
To What Faults Do You Feel Most Indulgent? To The Ones That Arise From Urgent Material Needs.
Needs
Faults
Materialism
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.
Atheist
Writing
Hands
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.
Baby
Atheist
Children
No Moral Person Would Do Such A Thing Unless They Thought It Was Divinely Warranted.
Religion
Moral
Persons
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.
Mother
Atheist
Kings
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.
Giving
Would Be
Oscars
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.
Order
Trying
Target
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.
Religious
Lying
Writing
Faith Is The Surrender Of The Mind; It's The Surrender Of Reason, It's The Surrender Of The Only Thing That Makes Us Different From Other Mammals. It's Our Need To Believe, And To Surrender Our Skepticism And Our Reason, Our Yearning To Discard That And Put All Our Trust Or Faith In Someone Or Something, That Is The Sinister Thing To Me. Of All The Supposed Virtues, Faith Must Be The Most Overrated.
Atheist
Believe
Animal
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.
Loyalty
Bullying
Average
In The Grip Of A Neurological Disorder, I Am Fast Losing Control Of Words Even As My Relationship With The World Has Been Reduced To Them.
Losing Control
World
Disorder
Beautiful Sentences Pop Into My Head. Beautiful Sentences That Aren't Always Absolutely Accurate. Then, I Have To Choose Between The Beautiful Sentence And Being Absolutely Accurate. It Can Be A Difficult Choice.
Beautiful
Difficult Choices
Pops
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.
Children
Lying
Believe
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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