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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'.

-Christopher Hitchens

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We Inherited These Principles

Christopher Hitchens

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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'.

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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.

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

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?

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.

When I Go To The Clinic Next And Sit With A Tube In My Arm And Watch The Poison Go In, I'm In An Attitude Of Abject Passivity. It Doesn't Feel Like Fighting At All; It Just Feels Like Submitting.

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

I 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.

We Keep On Being Told That Religion, Whatever Its Imperfections, At Least Instills Morality. On Every Side, There Is Conclusive Evidence That The Contrary Is The Case And That Faith Causes People To Be More Mean, More Selfish, And Perhaps Above All, More Stupid.

The Totalitarian, To Me, Is The Enemy - The One That's Absolute, The One That Wants Control Over The Inside Of Your Head, Not Just Your Actions And Your Taxes.

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.

The Person Who Is Certain, And Who Claims Divine Warrant For His Certainty, Belongs Now To The Infancy Of Our Species.

It's True That Obscenity Is A Matter Of Taste And In The Eye Of The Beholder.

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.

To Be In Opposition Is Not To Be A Nihilist.

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.

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Greatest Atheist

If You Think All This Is Going On, All These Gigantic Fields Of Gravity And Light With You In Mind, Then You Really Do Have A Self-centredness Problem.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

What Happens To The Faith Healer And The Shaman When Any Poor Citizen Can See The Full Effect Of Drugs Or Surgeries, Administered Without Ceremonies Or Mystifications? Roughly The Same Thing As Happens To The Rainmaker When The Climatologist Turns Up, Or To The Diviner From The Heavens When Schoolteachers Get Hold Of Elementary Telescopes.

The Quality You Most Admire In A Woman? Courage Moral And Physical: "anima"-the Ability To Visualize The Mind And Need Of A Man. Also A Sense Of The Absurd.

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

I Don't Say Things Like "the Grace Of God." All That's White Noise To Me, Not Because I'm An Intellectual. For Many People, It's Gibberish. Likewise, The Idea That The Koran Was Dictated By An Archaic Illiterate Is A Fantasy.

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No Child's Behind Left.

'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.

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.

Redemption Is Promised At The Low Price Of Surrender Of Your Critical Faculties.

[even If The U.s. Doesn't Attack] Saddam Hussein Is Not Going To Survive. His Regime Is On The Verge Of Implosion.

You Have To Choose Your Future Regrets.

There Can Be No Progress Without Head-on Confrontation.

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

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

[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.

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

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.

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

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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.

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.

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

There Are Days When I Miss My Old Convictions As If They Were An Amputated Limb. But In General I Feel Better, And No Less Radical, And You Will Feel Better Too, I Guarantee, Once You Leave Hold Of The Doctrinaire And Allow Your Chainless Mind To Do Its Own Thinking.

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.

No School Of Philosophy Has Ever Solved This Question Of Whether Being Determines Consciousness Or The Other Way Around. It May Be A False Antithesis.

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.

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

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

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.

I Think That There Is No Supernatural Dimension. The Natural World Is Quite Wonderful Enough. The More We Know About It, The Much More Wonderful It Is Than Any Supernatural Proposition.

[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.

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

If People I've Never Met Or Don't Know Say That What I've Written Or Done Or Said Means Anything To Them, Then I'm Happy To Take It At Face Value, For Once. It Cheers Me Up.

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.

The Pre-history Of Our Species Is Hag-ridden With Episodes Of Nightmarish Ignorance And Calamity, For Which Religion Used To Identify, Not Just The Wrong Explanation, But The Wrong Culprit. Human Sacrifices Were Made Preeminently In Times Of Epidemics, Useless Prayers Were Uttered, Bogus Miracles Attested To, And Scapegoats - Such As Jews Or Heretics Or Witches - Hunted Down And Burned.

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

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

Islam In Its Origins Is Just As Shady And Approximate As Those From Which It Took Its Borrowings. It Makes Immense Claims For Itself, Invokes Prostrate Submission Or "surrender" As A Maxim To Its Adherents, And Demands Deference And Respect From Nonbelievers Into The Bargain. There Is Nothing-absolutely Nothing-in Its Teachings That Can Even Begin To Justify Such Arrogance And Presumption.

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

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

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

I've Proved To Be As Difficult To Convert As I Am To Hypnotize.

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

The Discovery There Is No God Is A Great Relief, Because If There Were, It Would Be Like Living In A Celestial North Korea If There Was One. You Would Never Be Able To Escape.

The Violence In The Bible Is Appalling.

Chemotherapy Isn't Good For You. So When You Feel Bad, As I Am Feeling Now, You Think, 'well That Is A Good Thing Because It's Supposed To Be Poison. If It's Making The Tumor Feel This Queasy, Then I'm Ok With It.'

Rosa Luxemburg Was - Still Is For Me - A Great Personal And Intellectual Heroine. Her Analysis Of Leninism And Capitalism And Social Democracy Are All Worth Reading. I Wouldn't Consider Anyone Truly Politically Literate If They Hadn't Given Her Work At Least Some Study.

I Wrote A Piece From North Korea Called Visit To A Small Planet Which Is A Line I Stole From A Play Of Gore Vidal's, Because It Did Seem To Me As If I Had Left This Planet Completely To Go On This Visit To The Northern Part Of The Korean Peninsula, And It Was As If Coming Back From Another Spatial Body Altogether.

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

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?

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.

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.

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 A Curious Thing In American Life That The Most Abject Nonsense Will Be Excused If The Utterer Can Claim The Sanction Of Religion. A Country Which Forbids An Established Church By Law Is Prey To Any Denomination. The Best That Can Be Said Is That This Is Pluralism Of A Kind.

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.

Human Beings Are Pattern-seeking Animals Who Will Prefer Even A Bad Theory Or A Conspiracy Theory To No Theory At All.

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.

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

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

I Have Decided To Take Whatever My Disease Can Throw At Me.

History Is A Tragegy, Not A Morality Tale.

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.

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

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!'

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.

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.

The Only Position That Leaves Me With No Cognitive Dissonance Is Atheism.

Cognitive Dissonance

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.

Europeans Think Americans Are Fat, Vulgar, Greedy, Stupid, Ambitious And Ignorant And So On. And They've Taken As Their Own, As Their Representative American Someone Who Actually Embodies All Of Those Qualities.

The Finest Fury Is The Most Controlled.

You Can Be A Polish American, Or An Arab American, Or A Greek American But You Can't Be English American. Why Not?

Virtue And Merit Can Become Their Opposites If They Are Exacted Or Compelled.

One Can't Indefinitely Do For Somebody What He Is Reluctant To Do For Himself.

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

Religion Gets Its Morality From Us. We Don't Get Our Morality From Religion.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I Have More Than Once In My Time Woken Up Feeling Like Death.

Teasing Is Very Often A Sign Of Inner Misery.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

You Can't Have Occupation And Human Rights.

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.

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

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.

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

I'm Not That Keen On The Idea Of Being Unconscious.

Skepticism Rather Than Credulity Is The Highest Principle That The Human Intellect Can Use To Ennoble Our Existence.

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.

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.

Your Ideal Authors Ought To Pull You From The Foundering Of Your Previous Existence, Not Smilingly Guide You Into A Friendly And Peaceable Harbor.

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.

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

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.

[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.

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.

I Felt Clinton Represented The Worst Of The 1960s.

There Is An Unusually High And Consistent Correlation Between The Stupidity Of A Given Person And That Person’s Propensity To Be Impressed By The Measurement Of Iq.

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

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.

I Vote And I Do Jury Duty.

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

The Cause Of My Life Has Been To Oppose Superstition. It's A Battle You Can't Hope To Win - It's A Battle That's Going To Go On Forever. It's Part Of The Human Condition.

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

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

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

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

The United States Has An Isolationist And Insular Culture, Combined With A Global And Interventionist Posture. This Highly Dangerous And Febrile Mixture, Which Greatly Facilitates The Task Of The Fear-mongers And Chauvinists, Needs A Very Exact And Nuanced Diagnosis. I Don't Think That Analogies From The Totalitarian Model, However Suggestive, Are Sufficient.

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.

Those Who Had Alleged That A Million Civilians Were Dying From Sanctions Were Willing, Nay Eager, To Keep Those Same Murderous Sanctions If It Meant Preserving Saddam!

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.

Gullibility And Credulity Are Considered Undesireable Qualities In Every Department Of Human Life - Except Religion ... Why Are We Praised By Godly Men For Surrendering Our 'godly Gift' Of Reason When We Cross Their Mental Thresholds?

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.

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

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.

Cheap Booze Is A False Economy.

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

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

It Is Interesting To Find That People Of Faith Now Seek Defensively To Say That They Are No Worse Than Fascists Or Nazis Or Stalinists

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

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.

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.

Arguments That Explain Everything... Explain Nothing

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

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

I Think Everybody Has Had The Experience At Some Point When They Feel That There's More To Life Than Just Matter. But I Think It's Very Important To Keep That Under Control And Not To Hand It Over To Be Exploited By Priests And Shamans And Rabbis And Other Riffraff.

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.

Demands That You Believe The Impossible Do Not Lead To Peaceful Outcomes.

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.

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.

Chomsky Proceeds On The Almost Unthinkably Subversive Assumption That The United States Should Be Judged By The Same Standards That It Preaches (often At Gunpoint) To Other Nations He Is Nearly The Only Person Now Writing Who Assumes A Single Standard Of International Morality Not For Rhetorical Effect, But As A Matter Of Habitual, Practically Instinctual Conviction.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I'm Dying, But So Are You

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

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

The 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Its A Matter Of Principle. If Jews Born In Brooklyn Have A Right To A State In Palestine Then Palestinians Born In Jerusalem Have A Right To A State In Palestine.

The Obsession With Gold, Actually And Politically, Occurs Among Those Who Regard Economics As A Branch Of Morality. Gold Is Solid, Gold Is Durable, Gold Is Rare, Gold Is Even (in Certain Very Peculiar Circumstances) Convertible. To Believe In Thrift, Solidity And Soundness Is To Believe In Some Way In The Properties Of Gold.

Thus, Though I Dislike To Differ With Such A Great Man, Voltaire Was Simply Ludicrous When He Said That If God Did Not Exist It Would Be Necessary To Invent Him. The Human Invention Of God Is The Problem To Begin With.

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.

Religion Makes Intelligent People Say And Do Wacky Things, Believe And Affirm Crazy Things.

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.

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.

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

The 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.

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.

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.

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

"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.

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.

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.

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