“The socialist movement enabled universal suffrage, the imposition of limits upon exploitation, and the independence of colonial and subject populations. Where it succeeded, one can be proud of it. Where it failed - as in the attempt to stop the First World War and later to arrest the growth of facism - one can honorably regret its failure.”

— Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

4:44 pm  •  12 February 2012  •  7 notes

“Nobody has to endure any real risk of involuntary smoke inhalation, and no further laws are necessary to secure this existing immunity from harm…Don’t pursue me to the park bench if you prevent me from smoking indoors; I will of course ask permission of anyone else sitting there. I will even ask permission to smoke from people who visit me in my own home. But I won’t let them visit me and then tell me to put my cigarette out. Anyone failing to see this distinction is a moral cretin, and several other kinds of idiot as well, the sort of person who thinks that a fine bar can be reduced to the utilitarian definition of a ‘workplace.’”

— Christopher Hitchens on the smoking ban

4:40 pm  •  12 February 2012  •  26 notes

“He seems content-free to me. Never had a job, except in PR, and it shows. People as, ‘What do you think of him?’ My answer is: he doesn’t make me think.”

— Christopher Hitchens on David Cameron

5:26 pm  •  6 February 2012  •  11 notes

“The unstoppably inflating awards buisness exists to reward sponsors, to pacify egos, to generate sales, and to puff reputations. This doesn’t matter so much in the world of ads and artifacts, any more than it does in the world where you see the ‘hotel employee of the month’ scowling at you from a reusable plastic frame as you drum your gnawed fingers at an abandoned (‘Thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you better’) reception desk. It does make a difference, though, in the world of letters…Writing is meant to be a solitary and egotistical buisness, and heaven knows what minor or mediocre writers did in the days before half the dusk jackets carried the words ‘award-winning’ (or even more pathetic, catch-penny appeal ‘nominated for the X award’). Nowadays, the thirst for trophies is putting writers through hoops that ought to embarrass even the most hardened Oscar seeker.”

— Christopher Hitchens, “These Glittering Prizes,” Vanity Fair, January 1993

7:35 am  •  5 February 2012  •  7 notes

“I also take the view that it’s a mistake to try and look younger than one is, and that the face in particular ought to be the register of a properly lived life. I don’t want to look as if I have been piloting the Concorde without a windshield, and I can’t imagine whom I would be fooling if I did.”

— Christopher Hitchens on the limits of self-improvement 

7:24 am  •  5 February 2012  •  9 notes

“If you don’t want to sound like the Pope, who apologizes for everything and for nothing, then your apology should cost you something.”

— Christopher Hitchens, Nation, 5/29/200

7:20 am  •  5 February 2012  •  1 note

“…One of the most idiotic jeers against animal lovers is the one about their preferring critters to people. As a matter of observation, it will be found that people who ‘care’-about rain forests or animals, miscarriages of justice or dictatorships-are, though frequently irritating, very often the same people. Whereas those who love hamburgers and riskless hunting and mink coats are not in the front ranks of Amnesty International.”

— Christopher Hitchens, “Political Animals,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2002

7:18 am  •  5 February 2012  •  7 notes

“Given that the Americans were the first English-speaking subjects to expel the Hanoverian monarchy from their territory and their constitution, it’s amazing they now allow it so much space on their supermarket check-out racks and in their hearts.”

— Christopher Hitchens, “No Wonder America Is Baffled,” Evening Standard, 6/26/1992

7:12 am  •  5 February 2012  •  2 notes

“With a necessary part of its collective mind, religion looks forward to the destruction of the world…Perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive, and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth, religion has never ceased to proclaim the Apocalypse and the day of judgment.”

— Christopher Hitchens, “God Is Not Great”

8:24 am  •  4 February 2012  •  13 notes

“…It’s a sign of alcoholism to make rules about how much you drink.”

— Christopher Hitchens, “Booze and Fags,” London Review of Books, 3/12/1992

8:20 am  •  4 February 2012  •  3 notes

“There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues, but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: ‘Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.’ I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”

— Christopher Hitchens on antidepressants [Hitch 22 (New York: Twelve, 2010), 342]

8:14 am  •  4 February 2012  •  20 notes

“Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: “Don’t be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones.” People might suppose this was in poor taste.”

— Christopher Hitchens

12:55 pm  •  11 January 2012  •  3 notes

12:53 pm  •  11 January 2012  •  8 notes