Christopher Hitchens Zitate

seite 3

„Die Philosophie beginnt dort, wo die Religion endet, genauso wie die Chemie dort beginnt, wo die Alchemie ausgeht, und die Astronomie den Platz der Astrologie ersetzt.“

„Was ohne Beweise behauptet werden kann, kann ohne Beweise abgetan werden.“

„Gibt es überhaupt etwas, das für jemanden verboten ist, der sagt, dass er Gott auf seiner Seite habe?“

„Kinder mit der Vorstellung an die Hölle in Schrecken zu versetzen, Frauen als minderwertige Schöpfung zu betrachten - ist das etwa gut für die Welt?“

„Alles über das Christentum ist in dem erbärmlichen Bild der Herde enthalten.“

„Friedrich Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich st“

„Ich habe es immer kurios und berührend gefunden, dass es in den USA eine Bewegung gibt (Libertäre), die denkt, Amerikaner seien noch nicht egoistisch genug.“

„Sei niemals ein Zuschauer von Ungerechtigkeit oder Dummheit. Das Grab wird viel Zeit zum Schweigen geben.“

„Befreie dich von der Idee einer Himmelsdiktatur und du hast den ersten Schritt getan, um frei zu werden.“

„Ohne offene Konfrontation kann es keinen Fortschritt geben.“

„Jeder hat ein Buch in sich, aber in den meisten Fällen sollte es dort bleiben.“

„Die Suche nach dem Nirvana, wie auch die Suche nach Utopia oder dem Ende der Geschichte oder der klassenlosen Gesellschaft, ist letztendlich vergeblich und gefährlich. Sie beinhaltet, sollte sie ihrer nicht bedürfen, den Schlaf der Vernunft. Es gibt kein Entrinnen vor Unbehagen und Kampf.“

„Entweder, Sie akzeptieren das Prinzip der königlichen Intervention oder Sie tun es nicht. Und wenn Sie dies nicht tun, haben Sie immer noch die Wahl zwischen einem tatsächlichen "Commonwealth" - dem schönen und klangvollen Namen, den die englischen Revolutionäre dem am meisten verbotenen Abschnitt unserer Geschichte nach der Entfernung der Stuarts gegeben haben.“

„Wenn Sie [Jerry] Falwell einen Einlauf verabreichen würden, könnte er in einer Streichholzschachtel begraben werden.“

„Vielleicht fällt Ihnen auf, wie oft die Leugnung die Einleitung zur Rechtfertigung darstellt.“

“Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like.”

“For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.”

“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.”

“Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.”

“What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.”

“It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory”

“The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.”

“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.”

“The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.”

“If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.”

“I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.”

“Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.”

“It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.”

“How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.”

“When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.”

“What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.”

“Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.”

“I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do”

“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.”

“Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.”

“What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.”

“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.”

“Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.”

“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.”

“Cheap booze is a false economy.”

“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”

“When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.”

“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.”

“We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.”