Christopher Hitchens cytaty (328 cytatów, strona 8)

Christopher Hitchens: 328 cytatów0 Polubień

Christopher Hitchens słynne cytaty

„Nie daj się zaszufladkować; spodziewaj się jednak, że nazwą cię „fanatykiem” i „rozrabiaką.””

Źródło: Listy do młodego buntownika; cyt. za Artur Domosławski, Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) Skandalista, polityka.pl, 17 grudnia 2011 http://www.polityka.pl/swiat/ludzie/1522573,4,christopher-hitchens-1949--2011.read

„Jesteśmy zbyt wyrafinowani intelektualnie by wierzyć w Boga, kreacjonizm i inne rzeczy tego rodzaju – powiadają lepiej wykształceni obrońcy kultu Matki Teresy. Jednak wierzymy w religię – przynajmniej dla innych. Religia to najprostszy sposób sprzedaży nadziei i najtańszy sposób upowszechnienia zasad moralnych. To również forma dyscypliny.(…) Filozofia i wiedza przeznaczone są tylko dla wybrańców, masom pozostaje religia i sentymentalne wzruszenia.”

Christopher Hitchens książka Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce

Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce (1995)
Źródło: str. 60.

„Nie bój się, że będą nazywać cię maniakiem.”

Christopher Hitchens

„(…) musimy wyjść poza naszą prehistorię i wyrwać się z kostropatych łapsk, które usiłują ciągnąć nas wstecz do katakumb i okopconych ołtarzy, ku grzesznej rozkoszy upokorzenia i służalczości”

Christopher Hitchens

Źródło: Artur Domosławski, Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) Skandalista, polityka.pl, 17 grudnia 2011 http://www.polityka.pl/swiat/ludzie/1522573,2,christopher-hitchens-1949--2011.read

„Byłem z komunistami przeciw apartheidowi, z „zimnowojennymi wojownikami” broniłem Czechosłowacji. W Bośni byłem po stronie muzułmanów, którzy nie zgadzali się ze mną w sprawie Salmana Rushdiego. Innym razem z Żydami, dla których byłem podejrzany z powodu popierania idei państwa palestyńskiego.”

Christopher Hitchens

„Religia pochodzi z dzieciństwa naszego gatunku i jest niemowlęcą próbą odpowiedzi na naszą nieuniknioną potrzebę wiedzy.”

Christopher Hitchens książka Bóg nie jest wielki

Bóg nie jest wielki (2007)

Christopher Hitchens Cytaty o ludziach

„Nie zapominajmy, że ci którzy potrafią wpływać na swój publiczny wizerunek, w istocie decydują o treści mitów na własny temat. Ludzie myślą o nich to, co oni sami o sobie myślą. W dzisiejszym świecie słowa i czyny osądza się na podstawie reputacji osoby, której słowa i czyny oceniamy, a nie odwrotnie.”

Christopher Hitchens książka Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce

Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce (1995)
Źródło: str.9.

„Ci, którzy chcą myśleć niezależnie, zawsze będą w mniejszości.”

Christopher Hitchens

„Ludzie bogaci chcą wierzyć, że ktoś, gdzieś naprawdę coś robi dla Trzeciego Świata. Dlatego nie chcą przyglądać się motywom działania i praktykom stosowanym przez tych, którzy zdają się pełnić tę rolę, bez względu na to, jak się z niej wywiązują.”

Christopher Hitchens książka Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce

Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce (1995)
Źródło: str. 34–35.

„Poznałem wielu odważnych, bezinteresownych buntowników, którzy bezrefleksyjnie wyznają islam albo wierzą w komunizm, nie zadając żadnych pytań. Ludzie tacy w moim przekonaniu nie zasługują na miano dysydentów czy opozycjonistów, ponieważ w ich wzorzec myślenia już są wpisane przyszłe opresje.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 78-79.

Christopher Hitchens Cytaty o religii

„I znów poczułem nagłe ukłucie oburzenia i jednocześnie niedowierzania. Czemuż to padają słowa, wedle których religia nie do końca jest prawdziwa, ale jednocześnie nie jest to ważne, bowiem jej fundamentem jest duchowe pocieszenie? Jakież to godne pogardy.”

Christopher Hitchens książka Bóg nie jest wielki

reakcja Hitchensa na słowa dyrektora szkoły do której uczęszczał.
Bóg nie jest wielki (2007)

„Dwie najgorsze rzeczy, o czym można się przekonać, nawet nigdzie nie wyjeżdżając, to rasizm i religia.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 129.

„Zorganizowana religia jest głównym źródłem zła na świecie: jest pełna przemocy, nielogiczna, nietolerancyjna, nierozerwalnie związana z takimi pojęciami, jak rasizm, ustrój plemienny czy bigoteria; zakorzeniona w ignorancji i wrogo nastawiona do wszelkich prób poznawczych, pogardliwa wobec kobiet i narzucana dzieciom.”

Christopher Hitchens książka Bóg nie jest wielki

Bóg nie jest wielki (2007)

Christopher Hitchens cytaty

„W jednym jestem stały, w walce przeciw totalitaryzmom, i tym z prawej, i z lewej strony. Totalitaryzm jest moim wrogiem, ten absolutny, który chce kontrolować to, co jest w twojej głowie, a nie tylko to, co robisz i twoje podatki.”

Christopher Hitchens

I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian – on the left and on the right. 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. (ang.) Źródło: rozmowa Richarda Dawkinsa, „New Statesman”, 13 grudnia 2011 http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/12/dawkins-hitchens-catholic

„Matka Teresa nigdy nie twierdziła, że jej działalność jest czymkolwiek innym niż fundamentalistyczną kampanią religijną, (…) przyznawała, że najubożsi z ubogich byli tylko jej narzędziem, dobrą okazją do wykazania się pobożnością.”

Christopher Hitchens książka Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce

Misjonarska miłość. Matka Teresa w teorii i w praktyce (1995)
Źródło: str. 24.

„Żyj w zgodzie ze swoim wewnętrznym Yossarianem.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 120.

„Z całych sił staraj się zwalczać atrofię i rutynę. Kwestionowanie Oczywistości i tego, co dane z góry, jest najważniejszym elementem maksymy de omnibus dubitandum.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 69.

„Wyobraź sobie ciągły błogostan i harmonię, a ujrzysz rzeczywistość pełną monotonii, bezcelowości i przewidywalności.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 42.

„Umysł jest naszym najcenniejszym narzędziem - nie powinno się go przyzwyczajać do zakładania z góry tego, czego jeszcze nie dowiedziono.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 73.

„Tłum czy zbiorowość ma najczęściej niższą inteligencję niż składające się na niego poszczególne osoby.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 93.

„Sprzeciw nie jest równoznaczny z nihilizmem.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 28.

„Ćwierćinteligenci przystępują do kultów, których jedynym celem jest uśmierzenie bólu myślenia.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 48.

„Codzienna dawka irytacji przedłuża życie.”

Christopher Hitchens

Listy do młodego kontestatora (2001)
Źródło: s. 70.

Christopher Hitchens: Cytaty po angielsku

“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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Christopher Hitchens

April 18, 2003 http://www.slate.com/id/2081707/: On Iraq 2000s, 2003

“[Religion] is innately irrational.”

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Christopher Hitchens

Hannity's America, May 13, 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWoHh4_rVdg http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Hannity_Christopher_Hitchens_Hannity%27s_America_May13%2C_2007?venotify=created
2000s, 2007

“Those who say that without the monarchy Britain would be a banana republic are closing their eyes to the banana republic features which the cult of monarchy necessitates. Dazzled by the show, moreover, they may be missing other long-run tendencies towards banana-dom which it is the partial function of monarchy to obscure.”

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Christopher Hitchens

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

“I ask myself why do these worshipers of this God want to convict him of being such a crummy designer - most of his creations die off, the rest suffer miserably; of being cruel and capricious and bungling and incompetent and callous as a father?”

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Christopher Hitchens

www.youtube.com/watch?v=THHapkLeSGo?t=24m23s

Christopher Hitchens vs John Lennox - Is God Great? [2009]
2000s, 2009

“America is preeminently a country of, if not sexual licenses… a country of sexual tolerance, a country of sexual, I… would settle for pluralism, for now. Well, the Holy Mother Church doesn't settle for that. The Holy Mother Church makes rather strict demands. The Holy Mother Church prohibits, by various edicts,… statutes, and pronouncements, all forms of sex that are not specifically devoted to the outcome of procreating further Catholics, and it enforces this with a celibate hierarchy. Now, that's fine, and it is your choice, and… as Mr. Donohue did say, no one has to join that church, but that church, where it can, does try and impose those standards on non-believers and non-members. And there will always seem, to some people, I think, something absurd in the enforcement of such statutes, especially since we know most Catholics don't observe them, by a celibate oligarchy and hierarchy.”

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Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

“… I wouldn't have her job'. Those who profess unquenchable love for the sovereign are adamant that she press on in a task that they consider killingly hard.”

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Christopher Hitchens

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

“The transformation of part of the northern part of this continent into "America" inaugurated a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation, and thus deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto, with or without the participation of those who wish they had never been born.”

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Christopher Hitchens

"Minority Report", The Nation, October 19, 1992; also in Salaita, p. 68.
1990s, Minority Report (1992)

“I'm not afraid of death myself, because I'm not gonna know I'm dead. I'm awed a bit by the idea, but I'm perfectly reconciled to it. Certainly I am, as everyone is, reconciled to everyone else's death but their own. They think an exception can be made in their own case.”

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Christopher Hitchens

As quoted in "Christmas with Christopher Hitchens", by Gregg LaGambina, The A.V. Club (20 December 2007) http://www.avclub.com/article/christmas-with-christopher-hitchens-14189 2000s, 2007

“If you want to avoid upsetting these people (Muslim fundamentalists) you have to let Indonesia commit genocide in East Timor, otherwise they'll be upset with you. You'll have made an enemy. If you tell them they can't throw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Karachi they will be annoyed with you. If you say we insist, we think that cartoonists in Copenhagen can print satire on the Prophet Muhammed you've just made an enemy. You've brought it on. You're encouraging it to happen. So unless you're willing to commit suicide for yourself and for this culture, get used to the compromises you'll have to make and the eventual capitulation that will come to you, but bloody well don't do that in my name…”

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Christopher Hitchens

Speech at Freedom From Religion Foundation on 12 October 2007.
2000s, 2007

“Humans should not worship other humans at all, but if they must do so it is better that the worshipped ones do not occupy any positions of political power.”

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Christopher Hitchens

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

“All the excitements of a prohibited book had their usual effect, one of which, as always, is to expose the fact that the censors don't know what they are talking about.”

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Christopher Hitchens

"Not Dead Yet" (1999).
2000s, 2000, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (2000)

“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.”

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Christopher Hitchens

2001-12-21
The Ends of War
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/ends-war: On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2001

“Charlton Heston: "Yes indeed I can (…). Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, Russia, uh… Iran."”

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Christopher Hitchens

1990s

“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.”

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Christopher Hitchens

"Minority Report", The Nation, October 19, 1992. Also quoted in Steven Salaita, The Holy Land in Transit:Colonialism And the Quest for Canaan. Syracuse University Press, 2006.(p. 68).
1990s

“Mosul is the site of a very famous old Iraqi university. The American forces were refurbishing the place. They were going to tear down some of the outer walls, give this palace to the university. They'd also connected the university to the Internet and to the Web. Helped people contact scholars on the outside world. That was all the job of these very good- humored, very thoughtful officers who were really helping to rebuild the place… I felt a sense of annoyance that I had to go there myself to find any of that out.”

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Christopher Hitchens

Interview with Gibson https://web.archive.org/web/20030810014618/http://michaeltotten.com/ (July 2003), Vanity Fair. 2000s, 2003

“The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it's called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine—religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you'll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn't matter; try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia, it works—works all the time. Name me one religion that stands for that, or ever has. Wherever you look in the world and you try to remove the shackles of ignorance and disease stupidity from women, it is invariably the clericy that stands in the way, or in the case of—now, furthermore, if you are going to grant this to Catholic charities, say, which I would hope are doing a lot of work in Africa, if I was a member of a church that had preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms, I'd be putting some conscience money into Africa too, I must say.”

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Christopher Hitchens

Debate vs. Tony Blair, "Be it Resolved, Religion is a Force for Good in the World" (November 26, 2010), Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, Ontario.
2010s, 2010

“Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!”

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Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2001, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)

“Cain: "Mr Hitchens, if I may interject, I'm not sure [about the relevance] of the instantaneous command of the geography of a region."”

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Christopher Hitchens

1990s

“The best case scenario is a rapid attack by precision-guided weapons, striking Saddam's communications in the first hours and preventing his deranged orders from being obeyed. Then a massive landing will bring food, medicine and laptop computers to a surging crowd of thankful and relieved Iraqis and Kurds. This could, in theory, all happen.”

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Christopher Hitchens

"What Happens Next to Iraq" http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_objectid=12677144&method=full&siteid=94762-name_page.html, Daily Mirror (2003-02-26): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq 2000s, 2003

“Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it's as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse. You may wish to choose a more rigorous mental workout but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my lifespan.”

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Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2001, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)

“The regular media caricature of Iraqi society is not even a parody. It is very common indeed to find mixed and intermarried families, and these loyalties and allegiances outweigh anything that can be mustered by a Jordanian jailbird who has bet everything on trying to ignite a sectarian war. Second, it means in the not very long run that the so-called insurgency can be politically isolated and militarily defeated. It already operates within a minority of a minority and is largely directed by unpopular outsiders.”

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Christopher Hitchens

"It's Curtains for al-Qaida" http://www.slate.com/id/2134378/, Slate (2006-01-16): On Iraq 2000s, 2006

“Interviewer: It seems to be acknowledged that there're more people out there supporting the aims of Al-Qaeda and groups like them, and are willing to die, as a result of this war, than perhaps there were previously?

Hitchens: Well, you could as easily say that the number of people who used to be based in Afghanistan, have, as a result of the intervention there, relocated themselves and spread the virus in that way. Both of these arguments lead to only one terminus, which is: we should surrender to jihadism, and not try to oppose it, in case we make them upset.”

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Christopher Hitchens

Scotland Live (2005-10-31}: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2005

“In today's Britain, the idea that there could be a Constitution more powerful - and even sacrosanct - than any crowned head or elected politician (thus abolishing the false antithesis between hereditary monarchs and capricious presidents) is thought of as a breathtakingly new and daring idea.”

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Christopher Hitchens

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

“What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance.”

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Christopher Hitchens

"Politically Correct" (1991).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“The truth of matter is, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, brothers and sisters, religion has it very much its own way in this country of ours. It's in the pledge of allegiance, thanks to a stupid intervention of President Eisenhower; it's on the money, it's in the opening of Congress every day, it's at the National Prayer Breakfast, it's when the delinquent president summons his advisors and his spiritual team in order to fend off what should have been inevitable, it's when Al Gore can't bring himself to criticize a decision of the Oklahoma school board, and it's high time that that situation was reversed and we developed a proper immunity to it, and made sure that religion can only be self-inflicted.”

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Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

“If you're actually certain that you're hitting only a concentration of enemy troops… then it's pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they're bearing a Koran over their heart, it'll go straight through that, too. So they won't be able to say, 'Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.”

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Christopher Hitchens

No way, 'cause it'll go straight through that as well. They'll be dead, in other words.
Quoted in * 2002-09-23
The Left and 9/11
Adam
Shatz
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020923&s=shatz
2000s, 2002

“We have preachers and savants who dilate endlessly on the sanctity of family and childhood but who tolerate a system in which a casual observer can correlate a child's social origin with its physical well-being.”

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Christopher Hitchens

"Hating Sweden" (1989).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“There's no such word, though there should be, as "adeism" or as being an "adeist", but if there was one I would say that's what I was. I don't believe that we are here as the result of a design or that by following the appropriate rituals we can overcome death. If there was such a force, if there was an entity that was responsible for the beginning of the cosmos, and that also happened to be busily engineering the very laborious production of life on our little planet, it still wouldn't prove that this entity cared about us; answered prayers; cared what church we went to, or whether we went to one at all; cared who we had sex with or in what position or by what means; cared what we ate or on what day; cared whether we lived or died. There's no reason at all why this entity isn't completely indifferent to us. You cannot get from deism to theism - except by a series of extraordinarily generous (to yourself) assumptions. The deist has all his work still ahead of him to show that it leads to revelation; to redemption; to salvation; or to suspensions of the natural order.”

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Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Lane Craig, 04/04/2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBx4vvlbZ8&t=42m38s 2000s, 2009

“For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental when they can be, which translates as, on the whole, lenient, there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick.”

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Christopher Hitchens

" For the Sake of Argument https://web.archive.org/web/20070827152049/http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1171" at www.booknotes.org, October 17, 1993. 1990s

“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.”

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Christopher Hitchens

V.
2010s, 2011, Mortality (2012)