Christopher Hitchens
- Our belief
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that goes against science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
Christopher Hitchens
- Cognitive Dissonance
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.
Christopher Hitchens
- Faith
Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from the other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.
Christopher Hitchens
- Religious Exhortations
Religious exhortation and telling people, telling children, that if they don't do the right thing, they'll go to terrifying punishments, or unbelievable rewards, that's making a living out of lying to children. That's what the priesthood do. And if all they did was lie to the children that would be bad enough. But they rape and torture them and then hope we'll call it 'abuse'.
Christopher Hitchens
- The Bible
The bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
Christopher Hitchens
- Mother Theresa
Mother Theresa was not a friend to 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 woman and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.
