---
title: "73 Politics Quotes By Christopher Hitchens"
description: "Politics quotes by Christopher Hitchens explore conceit, oil power, religion, and moral responsibility."
image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fa8/christopher-hitchens-117_fictions_bad-as-political-fiction-can-be-there-is_1465372.jpg"
---

> [“Bad as political fiction can be, there is always a politician prepared to make it look artistic by comparison.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/bad-as-political-fiction-can-be-there-is-always-a-politician-prepared/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fa8/christopher-hitchens-117_fictions_bad-as-political-fiction-can-be-there-is_1465372.jpg)

> [“The only people truly bound by campaign promises are the voters who believe them.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/the-only-people-truly-bound-by-campaign-promises-are-the-voters-who/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/112/christopher-hitchens-117_elections_the-only-people-truly-bound-by-campaign_2130032.jpg)

> [You don't say 'they all do it' unless you know you've been doing it too.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/you-don-t-say-they-all-do-it-unless-you-know-you-ve-been-doing-it-too/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/216/christopher-hitchens-117_corruption_you-don-t-say-they-all-do-it-unless-you_516716.jpg)

> [“Control over the production and distribution of oil is the decisive factor in defining who rules whom in the Middle East.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/control-over-the-production-and-distribution-of-oil-is-the-decisive/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d2c/christopher-hitchens-117_economy-of-the-middl_control-over-the-production-and-distribu_101686.jpg)

> [“The whole point about corruption in politics is that it can't be done, or done properly, without a bipartisan consensus.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/the-whole-point-about-corruption-in-politics-is-that-it-can-t-be-done/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/9a9/christopher-hitchens-117_bipartisanship_the-whole-point-about-corruption-in-poli_1993834.jpg)

> [ “Revolution from above, in some states and cases, is \[...\] often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.” ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/revolution-from-above-in-some-states-and-cases-is-often-preferable-to/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8ad/christopher-hitchens-117_conservatism_revolution-from-above-in-some-states-and_168848.jpg)

> [“Beware of identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/beware-of-identity-politics-i-ll-rephrase-that-have-nothing-to-do/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fd4/christopher-hitchens-117_beware_beware-of-identity-politics-i-ll-rephras_2556777.jpg)

> [“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-would-not-be-an-exaggeration-to-say-that-the-land-question-in/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5bc/christopher-hitchens-117_1979_it-would-not-be-an-exaggeration-to-say-t_783749.jpg)

> [If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/if-i-m-in-a-political-argument-i-think-i-can-with-reasonable-accuracy/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0ef/christopher-hitchens-117_able_if-i-m-in-a-political-argument-i-think-i_1200468.jpg)

> [The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/the-term-the-american-left-is-as-near-to-being-meaningless-or/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/01c/christopher-hitchens-117_american_the-term-the-american-left-is-as-near-to_643365.jpg)

> [“...to experience a furious disillusionment with ‘conventional’ politics, a bit young to be so cynical and so superior, you may think. My…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/to-experience-a-furious-disillusionment-with-conventional-politics-a/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3c4/christopher-hitchens-117_christopher-hitchens_to-experience-a-furious-disillusionment_1264303.jpg)

> [No possible future government in Kabul can be worse than the Taliban, and no thinkable future government would allow the level of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/no-possible-future-government-in-kabul-can-be-worse-than-the-taliban/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ed6/christopher-hitchens-117_al-qaeda_no-possible-future-government-in-kabul-c_2862590.jpg)

> [One of the many dreadful aspects of the Kennedy 'legacy' is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and "torch-passing"…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/one-of-the-many-dreadful-aspects-of-the-kennedy-legacy-is-the-now/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/461/christopher-hitchens-117_aspect_one-of-the-many-dreadful-aspects-of-the_1350112.jpg)

> [“I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/i-used-to-call-myself-a-single-issue-voter-on-the-essential-question/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b4a/christopher-hitchens-117_2008_i-used-to-call-myself-a-single-issue-vot_2464568.jpg)

> [“I have tried to write about politics in an allusive manner that draws upon other interests and to approach literature and criticism…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/i-have-tried-to-write-about-politics-in-an-allusive-manner-that-draws/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7af/christopher-hitchens-117_books_i-have-tried-to-write-about-politics-in_445278.jpg)

> [“It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-is-pardonable-for-children-to-yell-that-they-believe-in-fairies/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a18/christopher-hitchens-117_children_it-is-pardonable-for-children-to-yell-th_274914.jpg)

> [“Periclean Greeks employed the term idiotis , without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/periclean-greeks-employed-the-term-idiotis-without-any-connotation-of/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/52b/christopher-hitchens-117_ancient-greece_periclean-greeks-employed-the-term-idiot_989473.jpg)

> [“Those of us who follow politics seriously rather than view it as a game show do not look at Hillary Clinton and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/those-of-us-who-follow-politics-seriously-rather-than-view-it-as-a/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/9e2/christopher-hitchens-117_bill-clinton_those-of-us-who-follow-politics-seriousl_281653.jpg)

> [“Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/indifferent-to-truth-willing-to-use-police-state-tactics-and-vulgar/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

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> [ \[Today's left\] would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/today-s-left-would-have-left-us-with-slobodan-milosevic-in-power/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/46d/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_today-s-left-would-have-left-us-with-slo_2414808.jpg)

> [“Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/now-i-have-always-wanted-to-agree-with-lady-bracknell-that-there-is/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fe3/christopher-hitchens-117_confrontation_now-i-have-always-wanted-to-agree-with-l_1950366.jpg)

> [“I shall not vote for Sen. Obama and it will not be because he—like me and like all of us—carries African genes.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/i-shall-not-vote-for-sen-obama-and-it-will-not-be-because-he-like-me/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e7/christopher-hitchens-117_2008_i-shall-not-vote-for-sen-obama-and-it-wi_814688.jpg)

> [It would have been very alarming - morally, and in other ways too - if an attack of that nature, the 11…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-would-have-been-very-alarming-morally-and-in-other-ways-too-if-an/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/592/christopher-hitchens-117_alarming_it-would-have-been-very-alarming-morally_144071.jpg)

> [“Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/sarah-palin-appears-to-have-no-testable-core-conviction-except-the/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fb1/christopher-hitchens-117_atheism_sarah-palin-appears-to-have-no-testable_988817.jpg)

> [“During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/during-the-bosnian-war-in-the-late-1990s-i-spent-several-days/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/36b/christopher-hitchens-117_1990s_during-the-bosnian-war-in-the-late-1990s_1672507.jpg)

> [“Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the present danger of Soviet advance, the hypocrisy of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/question-which-mediterranean-government-shares-all-of-ronald-reagan-s/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/992/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_question-which-mediterranean-government_1897354.jpg)

> [“It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and military war against this enemy ran into difficulties, that it was 'a war…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-was-sometimes-feebly-argued-as-the-political-and-military-war/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/61a/christopher-hitchens-117_al-qaeda_it-was-sometimes-feebly-argued-as-the-po_660479.jpg)

> [“One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/one-also-hears-a-great-deal-about-how-this-awful-joint-tenure-of-the/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c9a/christopher-hitchens-117_2008_one-also-hears-a-great-deal-about-how-th_381611.jpg)

> [“Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/many-governments-employ-torture-but-this-was-the-first-time-that-the/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4f7/christopher-hitchens-117_argentina_many-governments-employ-torture-but-this_6890.jpg)

> [ “Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky \["Letters," December 3\], repudiating the very idea that he and… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/some-readers-may-have-noticed-an-icy-little-missive-from-noam-chomsky/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0d5/christopher-hitchens-117_2001_some-readers-may-have-noticed-an-icy-lit_2701880.jpg)

> [“This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/this-is-what-you-get-when-you-found-a-political-system-on-the-family/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6a4/christopher-hitchens-117_2009_this-is-what-you-get-when-you-found-a-po_155856.jpg)

> [“During the 1992 election I concluded as early as my first visit to New Hampshire that Bill Clinton was hateful in his…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/during-the-1992-election-i-concluded-as-early-as-my-first-visit-to/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/01b/christopher-hitchens-117_1992_during-the-1992-election-i-concluded-as_2881035.jpg)

> [“The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/the-neo-cons-or-some-of-them-decided-that-they-would-back-clinton/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/621/christopher-hitchens-117_a-long-short-war_the-neo-cons-or-some-of-them-decided-tha_487673.jpg)

> [“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/very-often-the-test-of-one-s-allegiance-to-a-cause-or-to-a-people-is/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/12e/christopher-hitchens-117_1950s_very-often-the-test-of-one-s-allegiance_369954.jpg)

> [“Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't)…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/pettiness-often-leads-both-to-error-and-to-the-digging-of-a-trap-for/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/db2/christopher-hitchens-117_1990s_pettiness-often-leads-both-to-error-and_2898661.jpg)

> [“For all its outwardly easy Latin charm, Buenos Aires was making me feel sick and upset, so I did take that trip…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/for-all-its-outwardly-easy-latin-charm-buenos-aires-was-making-me/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0bb/christopher-hitchens-117_argentina_for-all-its-outwardly-easy-latin-charm-b_1628767.jpg)

> [“The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/the-north-korean-capital-pyongyang-is-a-city-consecrated-to-the/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fc6/christopher-hitchens-117_1968_the-north-korean-capital-pyongyang-is-a_694683.jpg)

> [“So many of the professional foreign policy establishment, and so many of their hangers-on among the lumpen academics and journalists, had become…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/so-many-of-the-professional-foreign-policy-establishment-and-so-many/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/092/christopher-hitchens-117_academia_so-many-of-the-professional-foreign-poli_356446.jpg)

> [“I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as 'Abu Nidal' ('father of struggle'), who was at the time…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/i-was-taken-to-a-villa-to-meet-sabri-al-banna-known-as-abu-nidal/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

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> [“What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/what-do-you-have-to-forget-or-overlook-in-order-to-desire-that-this/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c92/christopher-hitchens-117_2008_what-do-you-have-to-forget-or-overlook-i_2742838.jpg)

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## More by Christopher Hitchens

> [“The spirit of our accurate and exact philosophy is outraged by conclusions that contradict each other so glaringly.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/the-spirit-of-our-accurate-and-exact-philosophy-is-outraged-by/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [“Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/many-governments-employ-torture-but-this-was-the-first-time-that-the/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [ 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… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-s-los-angeles-mostly-full-of-nonsense-and-delusion-and-egomania/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/to-be-against-rationalization-is-not-the-same-as-to-be-opposed-to/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [ \[Religion\] attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/religion-attacks-us-in-our-deepest-integrity-the-core-of-our-self/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [“In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/in-the-very-recent-past-we-have-seen-the-church-of-rome-befouled-by/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-s-surprising-to-me-how-many-of-my-friends-send-christmas-cards-or/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/suppose-there-were-groups-of-secularists-at-hospitals-who-went-round/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [There are, after all, atheists who say they wish the fable were true but are unable to suspend the requisite disbelief, or who have…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/there-are-after-all-atheists-who-say-they-wish-the-fable-were-true/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [“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.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-isn-t-so-long-since-a-test-of-anglican-orthodoxy-was-applied-to/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/gullibility-and-credulity-are-considered-undesireable-qualities-in/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-s-much-worse-to-see-a-woman-drunk-than-a-man-i-don-t-know-quite/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-s-true-that-obscenity-is-a-matter-of-taste-and-in-the-eye-of-the/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [I worked out early on to give up things I couldn't do well at all.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/i-worked-out-early-on-to-give-up-things-i-couldn-t-do-well-at-all/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

> [Writing is what's important to me, and anything that helps me do that - or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/writing-is-what-s-important-to-me-and-anything-that-helps-me-do-that/)

[Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/)

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                        "text": "“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one.”",
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                        "text": "If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.",
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                        "text": "“I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity.”",
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                        "text": "“Periclean Greeks employed the term idiotis , without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization—of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second.”",
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                        "text": "“Those of us who follow politics seriously rather than view it as a game show do not look at Hillary Clinton and simply think 'first woman president.' We think—for example—'first ex-co-president' or 'first wife of a disbarred lawyer and impeached former incumbent' or 'first person to use her daughter as photo-op protection during her husband's perjury rap.”",
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                        "text": "“Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.”",
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                        "text": "[Today's left] would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq the property of a psychopathic crime family. Now, I'm sorry to say, I've no patience with that leftist mentality anymore.",
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                        "text": "“Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes unless they set each other a good example. But I shouldn't pretend that the consensus itself was any of my concern. It was absurd and slightly despicable, in the first decade of Thatcher and Reagan, to hear former and actual radicals intone piously against 'the politics of confrontation.' I suppose that, if this collection has a point, it is the desire of one individual to see the idea of confrontation kept alive.”",
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                        "text": "“I shall not vote for Sen. Obama and it will not be because he—like me and like all of us—carries African genes. And I shall not be voting for Mrs. Clinton, who has the gall to inform me after a career of overweening entitlement that there is 'a double standard' at work for women in politics; and I assure you now that this decision of mine has only to do with the content of her character. We will know that we have put this behind us when [...] we have outgrown and forgotten the original prejudice.”",
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                        "text": "It would have been very alarming - morally, and in other ways too - if an attack of that nature, the 11 September attacks, had not aroused in us and in our governments and societies the spirit of self-defence. If that had not been one of the responses it seems to me there would have been very grave cause for concern.",
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                        "text": "“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.”",
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                        "text": "“During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other's candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town's few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?' It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke.”",
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                        "text": "“Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the present danger of Soviet advance, the hypocrisy of the United Nations, the unreliability of Europe, the perfidy of the Third World and the need for nuclear defense policy? Question: Which Mediterranean government is Ronald Reagan trying, with the help of George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, to replace with a government led by a party which professes socialism and which contains extreme leftists? If you answered 'the government of Israel' to both of the above, you know more about political and international irony than the President does.”",
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                        "text": "“It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and military war against this enemy ran into difficulties, that it was 'a war without end.' I never saw the point of this plaintive objection. The war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war. In protean forms, it is fought and refought in every country and every generation. In bin Ladenism we confront again the awful combination of the highly authoritarian personality with the chaotically nihilist and anarchic one. Temporary victories can be registered against this, but not permanent ones. As Bertold Brecht's character says over the corpse of the terrible Arturo Ui, the bitch that bore him is always in heat. But it is in this struggle that we develop the muscles and sinews that enable us to defend civilization, and the moral courage to name it as something worth fighting for.”",
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                        "text": "“One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred 'experience' on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main 'experience' involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency.”",
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                        "text": "“Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate or cruel man might do, given unlimited power over a woman, then anything that you can bring yourself to suspect was what became routine in ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School that became the headquarters of the business. I talked to Dr. Emilio Mignone, a distinguished physician whose daughter Monica had disappeared into the precincts of that hellish place. What do you find to say to a doctor and a humanitarian who has been gutted by the image of a starving rat being introduced to his daughter's genitalia? Like hell itself the school was endorsed and blessed by priests, in case any stray consciences needed to be stilled.”",
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                        "text": "“Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky [\"Letters,\" December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the \"roots\" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11: I'll talk about the situation in Afghanistan… Looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide… It indicates that whatever, what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next—in the next couple of weeks… very casually with no comment… we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder three or four million people. Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts...') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political.”",
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                        "text": "“This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in the not-too-remote future, the stout heart of Queen Elizabeth II will cease to beat. At that precise moment, her firstborn son will become head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England. In strict constitutional terms, this ought not to matter much. The English monarchy, as has been said, reigns but does not rule. From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one.”",
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                        "text": "“During the 1992 election I concluded as early as my first visit to New Hampshire that Bill Clinton was hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics. I have never had to take any of that back, whereas if you look up what most of my profession was then writing about the beefy, unscrupulous 'New Democrat,' you will be astonished at the quantity of sheer saccharine and drool. Anyway, I kept on about it even after most Republicans had consulted the opinion polls and decided it was a losing proposition, and if you look up the transcript of the eventual Senate trial of the president—only the second impeachment hearing in American history—you will see that the last order of business is a request (voted down) by the Senate majority leader to call Carol and me as witnesses. So I can dare to say that at least I saw it through.”",
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                        "text": "“The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and ethnic dictatorship in the Balkans took precedence. This, by the way, was partly a battle to save Muslims from Catholic and Christian Orthodox killers. That impressed me. The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of jihad ism when most people were half-asleep. And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the Weekly Standard and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not 'perception.' I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility. (I mean, have you read their sub-Brechtian stuff on Halliburton…?) And revolution from above, in some states and cases, is—as I wrote in my book A Long Short War —often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.”",
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                        "text": "“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.”",
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                        "text": "“Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn’t quite recognize”, Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the Guardian , and then didn't attend it because I wanted to be on television instead. This is easy: Martin had asked to use the fine lobby of my building for a farewell bash, and I'd set it up. People have quite often asked me to do that. My wife did the honors after Nightline told me that I’d have to come to New York if I wanted to abuse Mother Teresa and Princess Diana on the same show. Of all the people I know, Martin Walker and Sidney Blumenthal would have been the top two in recognizing that journalism and argument come first, and that there can be no hard feelings about it. How do I know this? Well, I have known Martin since Oxford. (He produced a book on Clinton, published in America as 'The President We Deserve'. He reprinted it in London, under the title, 'The President They Deserve'. I doffed my hat to that.) While Sidney—I can barely believe I am telling you this—once also solicited an invitation to hold his book party at my home. A few days later he called me back, to tell me that Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic , had insisted on giving the party instead. I said, fine, no bones broken; no caterers ordered as yet. 'I don't think you quite get it,' he went on, after an honorable pause. 'That means you can't come to the party at all.' I knew that about my old foe Peretz: I didn't then know I knew it about Blumenthal. I also thought that it was just within the limit of the rules. I ask you to believe that I had buried this memory until this book came out, but also to believe that I won't be slandered and won't refrain—if motives or conduct are in question—from speculating about them in my turn.”",
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                        "text": "“For all its outwardly easy Latin charm, Buenos Aires was making me feel sick and upset, so I did take that trip to the great plains where the gaucho epics had been written, and I did manage to eat a couple of the famous asados : the Argentine barbecue fiesta (once summarized by Martin Amis's John Self as 'a sort of triple mixed grill swaddled in steaks') with its slavish propitiation of the sizzling gods of cholesterol. Yet even this was spoiled for me: my hosts did their own slaughtering and the smell of drying blood from the abattoir became too much for some reason (I actually went 'off' steak for a good few years after this trip). Then from the intrepid Robert Cox of the Buenos Aires Herald I learned another jaunty fascist colloquialism: before the South Atlantic dumping method was adopted, the secret cremation of maimed and tortured bodies at the Navy School had been called an asado . In my youth I was quite often accused, and perhaps not unfairly, of being too politicized and of trying to import politics into all discussions. I would reply that it wasn’t my fault if politics kept on invading the private sphere and, in the case of Argentina at any rate, I think I was right. The miasma of the dictatorship pervaded absolutely everything, not excluding the aperitifs and the main course.”",
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                        "text": "“The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as 'Fat Man and Little Boy.') And a river runs through it. And on this river, the Taedong River, is moored the only American naval vessel in captivity. It was in January 1968 that the U.S.S. Pueblo strayed into North Korean waters, and was boarded and captured. One sailor was killed; the rest were held for nearly a year before being released. I looked over the spy ship, its radio antennae and surveillance equipment still intact, and found photographs of the captain and crew with their hands on their heads in gestures of abject surrender. Copies of their groveling 'confessions,' written in tremulous script, were also on show. So was a humiliating document from the United States government, admitting wrongdoing in the penetration of North Korean waters and petitioning the 'D.P.R.K.' (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) for 'lenience.' Kim Il Sung ('Fat Man') was eventually lenient about the men, but not about the ship. Madeleine Albright didn't ask to see the vessel on her visit last October, during which she described the gruesome, depopulated vistas of Pyongyang as 'beautiful.' As I got back onto the wharf, I noticed a refreshment cart, staffed by two women under a frayed umbrella. It didn't look like much—one of its three wheels was missing and a piece of brick was propping it up—but it was the only such cart I'd see. What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water. Nor did Madeleine Albright visit the absurdly misnamed 'Demilitarized Zone,' one of the most heavily militarized strips of land on earth. Across the waist of the Korean peninsula lies a wasteland, roughly following the 38th parallel, and packed with a titanic concentration of potential violence. It is four kilometers wide (I have now looked apprehensively at it from both sides) and very near to the capital cities of both North and South. On the day I spent on the northern side, I met a group of aging Chinese veterans, all from Szechuan, touring the old battlefields and reliving a war they helped North Korea nearly win (China sacrificed perhaps a million soldiers in that campaign, including Mao Anying, son of Mao himself). Across the frontier are 37,000 United States soldiers. Their arsenal, which has included undeclared nuclear weapons, is the reason given by Washington for its refusal to sign the land-mines treaty. In August 1976, U.S. officers entered the neutral zone to trim a tree that was obscuring the view of an observation post. A posse of North Koreans came after them, and one, seizing the ax with which the trimming was to be done, hacked two U.S. servicemen to death with it. I visited the ax also; it's proudly displayed in a glass case on the North Korean side.”",
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                        "text": "“So many of the professional foreign policy establishment, and so many of their hangers-on among the lumpen academics and journalists, had become worried by the frenzy and paranoia of the Nixonian Vietnam policy that consensus itself was threatened. Ordinary intra-mural and extra-mural leaking, to such duly constituted bodies as Congress, was getting out of hand. It was Kissinger who inaugurated the second front or home front of the war; illegally wiretapping the telephones even of his own staff and of his journalistic clientele. (I still love to picture the face of Henry Brandon when he found out what his hero had done to his telephone.) This war against the enemy within was the genesis of Watergate; a nexus of high crime and misdemeanour for which Kissinger himself, as Isaacson wittily points out, largely evaded blame by taking to his ‘shuttle’ and staying airborne. Incredibly, he contrived to argue in public with some success that if it were not for democratic distempers like the impeachment process his own selfless, necessary statesmanship would have been easier to carry out. This is true, but not in the way that he got newspapers like Rees-Mogg’s Times to accept.”",
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                        "text": "“I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as 'Abu Nidal' ('father of struggle'), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat's main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when Abu Nidal asked me if I would like to be trained in one of his camps. No thanks, I explained. From this awkward beginning there was a further decline. I was then asked if I knew Said Hammami, the envoy of the PLO in London. I did in fact know him. He was a brave and decent man, who in a series of articles in the London Times had floated the first-ever trial balloon for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. 'Well tell him he is a traitor,' barked my host. 'And tell him we have only one way with those who betray us.' The rest of the interview passed as so many Middle Eastern interviews do: too many small cups of coffee served with too much fuss; too many unemployed heavies standing about with nothing to do and nobody to do it with; too much ugly furniture, too many too-bright electric lights; and much too much faux bonhomie . The only political fact I could winnow, from Abu Nidal's vainglorious claims to control X number of 'fighters' in Y number of countries, was that he admired the People's Republic of China for not recognizing the State of Israel. I forget how I got out of his office.”",
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                        "text": "“What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred , was the women . And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter 'Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?' in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To . This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton 'rapid response' team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's 'issues.”",
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