Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchenswas an English-American author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on a range of subjects, including politics, literature, and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his confrontational style of debate made him...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 April 1949
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way. (Closing statement of the debate with William Dembski at Prestonwood Baptist Church, Plano, Texas, November 18, 2010)
I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.
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 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.
In one way, 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.
Unlike other countries, it was founded on written proclamations. America is an ideal as well as a republic. Its documents are open to revisions. They're works in progress. There's an invitation to participate.
I'm a single-issue voter, to get straight to the point. I'm really only interested in the candidate who's toughest and least apologetic when it comes to the confrontation with Islamic Jihadism.
I don't regard myself as any kind of conservative, except conceivably neo, and that word, of course, is a ridiculous appellation, because it's used to describe a group that was ready to make war on the status quo, which is not a conservative position.
Friends call me Hitch. Maybe it can be turned into a 900-phone number. People would pay to talk to me.
A celebrity is well known for being well known. I'm relatively well known - but for what I've written and said, or so I fondly imagine.
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.
The thing about religion is that it's the first and the worst. The worst because it's the first.