Quotes by Christopher Hitchens

A little later, the Apollo mission was consummated and there were Americans on the moon. I remember distinctly looking up from the quad on what was quite a moon-flooded night, and thinking about it. They made it! The Stars and Stripes are finally flown on another orb! Also, English becomes the first and only language spoken on a neighboring rock! Who could forbear to cheer? Still, the experience was poisoned for me by having to watch Richard Nixon smirking as he babbled to the lunar-nauts by some closed-circuit link. Was even the silvery orb to be tainted by the base, earthbound reality of imperialism?

Among the privileges of being a superpower, the right and the ability to make a local quarrel into a global one ranks very high.

Lefever describes his financing plan with modesty:Our detailed budget is realistic, but does not take into account the inflation that may occur before September 1983. The one place it could cut or reduce is item 7, the simultaneous interpreter services, if these services could be provided gratis by the U.S. government.In other words, the only way to make a saving on a U.S.-subsidized project is to take money out of another U.S.-subsidized column.

[T]he hyphenation question is, and always has been and will be, different for English immigrants. One can be an Italian-American, a Greek-American, an Irish-American and so forth. (Jews for some reason prefer the words the other way around, as in American Jewish Congress or American Jewish Committee.) And any of those groups can and does have a national day parade on Fifth Avenue in New York. But there is no such thing as an English-American let alone a British-American, and one can only boggle at the idea of what, if we did exist, our national day parade on Fifth Avenue might look like. One can, though, be an Englishman in America. There is a culture, even a literature, possibly a language, and certainly a diplomatic and military relationship, that can accurately be termed Anglo-American. But something in the very landscape and mapping of America, with seven eastern seaboard states named for English monarchs or aristocrats and countless hamlets and cities replicated from counties and shires across the Atlantic, that makes hyphenation redundant. Hyphenation—if one may be blunt—is for latecomers.

I can see why people find him [Hugo Chávez] charming. Hes very ebullient, as they say. Ive heard him make a speech, though, and he has a vice thats always very well worth noticing because its always a bad sign: he doesnt know when to sit down. Hes worse than Castro was. He wont shut up. Then he told me that he didnt think the United States landed on the moon and didnt believe in the existence of Osama bin Laden. He thought all of this was all a put-up job. Hes a wacko.

Not to dampen any parade, but if one asks if there is a single thing about Mr. Obamas Senate record, or state legislature record, or current program, that could possibly justify his claim to the presidency one gets ... what? Not much. Similarly lightweight unqualified white candidates have overcome this objection, to be sure, but what kind of standard is that?

In the spring of 1990 I flew to Aspen, Colorado, to cover a summit meeting between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George Herbert Walker Bush. This fairly routine political event took on sudden significance when, on the evening before the talks were scheduled to begin, Saddam Hussein announced that the independent state of Kuwait had, by virtue of a massive deployment of military force, become a part of Iraq. We were not to know that this act—and the name Saddam Hussein—would dominate international politics for the next decade and more, but it was still possible to witness something extraordinary: the sight of Mrs. Thatcher publicly inserting quantities of lead into George Bush’s pencil. The spattering quill of a Ralph Steadman would be necessary to do justice to such a macabre yet impressive scene.

Stuck in my own trap of writing about a nonsubject, I think I can defend my own self-respect, and also the integrity of a lost girl, by saying two things. First, the trivial doings of Paris Hilton are of no importance to me, or anyone else, and I should not be forced to contemplate them. Second, she should be left alone to lead such a life as has been left to her. If this seems paradoxical, then very well.

How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?

Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.

When I go to the clinic next and sit with a tube in my arm and watch the poison go in, Im in an attitude of abject passivity. It doesnt feel like fighting at all; it just feels like submitting.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. Its a battle you cant hope to win - its a battle thats going to go on forever. Its part of the human condition.

I dont envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

I dont think its possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

Its surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.

Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instants thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

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 dont think anyone in my family would really feel Id done them an injustice by saying that. We didnt see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

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.

Religion is part of the human make-up. Its 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.

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other peoples hope.