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
Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting 'O.K.' has deposed the more affirmative 'Yes,' so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of 'like' are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.
The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself.
Well, I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms, always be sure to ask which set. It works every time.
of most of the people I know in the (journalism) profession who heard that story, they know it either directly or indirectly from Mr. Blumenthal.
I have personal knowledge that Mr. Blumenthal recounted to other people in the journalistic community the same story about Monica Lewinsky that he told to me and Carol Blue.
There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.
Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime.
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.
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.
Religion makes kind people say unkind things: "I must prove my faith, so mutilate the genitals of my children." They wouldn't do that if God didn't tell them to do so.
I don't envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.
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.
I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.