To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world? — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
The thing about religion is that it's the first and the worst. The worst because it's the first. — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
I think it was David Hume who put it slightly vulgarly, this was again about the virgin birth I think. Which is… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“One of the very many connections between religious belief an the sinister, spoiled, selfish childhood of our species is the repressed desire… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“the ministries of the Church are regarded by the masses merely as dignities, her offices as posts of emolument—in short, popular religion… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
The teachings of Christianity - from vicarious redemption to the love of enemies, no thought for the morrow need be taken, that… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable,… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given'… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“What struck me, in reading the reports from Sri Lanka, was the mild disgrace of belonging to our imperfectly evolved species in… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
People are frightened of death, and the central lie of all religion is that there’s a cure for this and an exception… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“We can always be sure of one thing—that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of god and the sexually… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“To take a side against Rushdie, or to be neutral and evasive about him in the name of some vaguely sensitive ecumenical… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
If I was told to sacrifice something to prove my devotion to God, if I was told to do what all monotheists… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell, unless it is the sorely limited… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other words, religion is the self-consciousness and… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“if he had said otherwise. To admit that a thermonuclear catastrophe would be the end of civilization and of the biosphere would… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“[R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at… — 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
It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us - waking and sleeping… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“You allege some considerations in favor of a Deity from the universality of a belief in his existence. The superstitions of the… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos , or the… — 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