“Remember that it is 'free-thinking Jews,' not Jews as such, who are defined as the undesirables by T.S. Eliot in After Strange… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“One of my first reservations about Zionism was and is that, semiconsciously at least, it grants the anti-Semite's first premise about the… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“The important but delayed realization will have to come: Israeli Jews are a part of the diaspora, not a group that has… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“What people still do not like to admit is that there were two crimes in the form of one. Just as the… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots—written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements—and found that they… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to the elements by… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews.… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring.… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity.… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“I regard anti-Semitism as ineradicable and as one element of the toxin with which religion has infected us. Perhaps partly for this… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“ Die Judenfrage ,' it used to be called, even by Jews. 'The Jewish Question.' I find I quite like this interrogative… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“And I'll close by saying this. Because anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and fascism and war,… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son,… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“And I wonder, therefore, how James Atlas can have been so indulgent in his recent essay ‘The Changing World of New York… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“The spirit of our accurate and exact philosophy is outraged by conclusions that contradict each other so glaringly.” — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
“Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
It's [Los Angeles] mostly full of nonsense and delusion and egomania. They think they'll be young and beautiful forever, even though most of them… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning. — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
[Religion] attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
“In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or,… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends. — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
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… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
There are, after all, atheists who say they wish the fable were true but are unable to suspend the requisite disbelief, or who have… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
“It isn’t so long since a test of Anglican orthodoxy was applied to anyone seeking to study or teach at Oxford and Cambridge universities.… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder. — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
Writing is what's important to me, and anything that helps me do that - or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share
