Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes he astonished with passionate prose in pursuit of noble truths and causes, and sometimes he tried one’s patience with rhetorical flourishes ornate and self-serving. He was often burdened by a desire to burnish his own reputation for disputation for the sake of earning a livelihood in a world that rewards excess and hyperbole at the expense of deliberation and civility. But he was a learned man and a man who loved to learn. He was a serious scholar and a deeply devoted student of the finest literary traditions. He studied philosophy without becoming a pedant, and studied ideology without becoming an ideologue. He hated tyranny and hypocrisy and loved humor and irony. He thought with his heart and he conceded his faults. He was intolerant of blind faith and blind ambition. He courted favor with those in power, but never with those who abused it. He exposed sacred idols that were false. He argued often simply to stimulate debate for he believed that nothing was indisputable. He also knew that despite the many temptations and seductions that accompany access to power with bully pulpit entitlements-- he was an entertainer, and that there was honor in that too.

"The search for nirvana, like the search for utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."

MT(Mother Teresa) was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

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.

Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself.

Picture all experts as if they were mammals.

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity.

Suspect your own motives, and all excuses.