Home > Work > The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens
1 " Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for. "
― , The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens
2 " Control over the production and distribution of oil is the decisive factor in defining who rules whom in the Middle East. "
3 " Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen. "
4 " The only people truly bound by campaign promises are the voters who believe them. "
5 " The whole point about corruption in politics is that it can't be done, or done properly, without a bipartisan consensus. "
6 " You don't say 'they all do it' unless you know you've been doing it too. "
7 " Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister—that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.) "
8 " The point of protesting about 'moral equivalence' is surely not to blur moral choices on ‘our side’. Is it? "
9 " Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens. "
10 " If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement". "
11 " The problem with open-mindedness is that it can become empty-mindedness "
12 " Generally it must be stated that realpolitik has been better at dividing than at ruling. Take it as a whole since Kissinger called on the Shah in 1972, and see what the harvest has been. "
13 " I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty. "
14 " Any critique of realism must begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace. "
15 " The friends of Galtieri, Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar and Milosevic make unconvincing defenders of humanitarian values, and it can be seen that their inept and sometimes inane arguments lack either the principles or the seriousness that are required in such debates. "
16 " The contrarian dogma is simple and easy to understand: “Whatever is popular is wrong,” as Oscar Wilde proclaimed at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. "
17 " What the above examples reveal is not a man prone to the faux pas, but a gentleman—strictly defined, by Hitchens, as “someone who is never rude except on purpose.” A spectacular instance of his gentlemanliness occurred during an appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Unlike most guests, Hitchens did not try to flatter or pacify the audience. Instead, after being booed and jeered for pointing out the horrors of a nuclear Iran, he raised his middle finger and pointed it at them, while intoning, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” What this little episode demonstrated was not only his indifference to crowd opinion—impressive in itself—but also his binary nature: He has a large mind and a big mouth—neither of which ever seems to be closed. Whereas "
18 " . 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. "
19 " . . . If you really care about a serious cause or a deep subject, you may have to be prepared to be boring about it.” [Letters to a Young Contrarian (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 122] "
20 " The empire on which the sun never set was also the empire on which the gore never dried. "
― Christopher Hitchens , The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens
