Home > Work > Hitch 22: A Memoir
181 " it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity "
― Christopher Hitchens , Hitch 22: A Memoir
182 " (The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.) "
183 " justified in the name of “security” like almost every cowardly idiocy before and since, "
184 " Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow. T.S. Eliot’s “Hollow Men "
185 " I praised his balance of contrast between Lucretius, who said that since you won’t know you are dead you need not fear the condition of death, and Philip Larkin, who observes in his imperishable “Aubade” that this is exactly the thing about the postmortem condition that actually does, and must, make one afraid (emphasis mine): The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true… And specious stuff that says no rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear… So "
186 " No se trata de que sean ironías de la historia, sino de que la propia historia es irónica. No es que no existan certezas, sino que existe la absoluta certeza de que no hay certezas. No solo es cierto que el único examen de conocimiento es la conciencia aguda y cultivada de lo poco que sabe uno (como bien sabía Sócrates), sino que es cierto que ilimitadas zonas y campos de lo que uno ignora se extienden de tal modo y a tal velocidad que contemplarlos resulta casi fantásticamente hermoso. Entonces, una razón por la que no volvería a vivir mi vida es que uno no puede nacer sabiendo esas cosas. "
187 " I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. ... Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. "