--- title: "11 Theocracy Quotes By Christopher Hitchens" description: "11 Theocracy quotes by Christopher Hitchens. Plus more from Christopher Hitchens and more Theocracy sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/27c/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-l_1436841.jpg" --- > [“ Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-life-the-women-of-afghanistan/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/27c/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-l_1436841.jpg) > [“Like the Nazis, the cadres of jihad have a death wish that sets the seal on their nihilism. The goal of a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/like-the-nazis-the-cadres-of-jihad-have-a-death-wish-that-sets-the/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55a/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_like-the-nazis-the-cadres-of-jihad-have_2372899.jpg) > [“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/many-religions-now-come-before-us-with-ingratiating-smirks-and-2/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/187/christopher-hitchens-117_blasphemy_many-religions-now-come-before-us-with-i_3150562.jpg) > [“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah ,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/when-the-washington-post-telephoned-me-at-home-on-valentine-s-day/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6d8/christopher-hitchens-117_atheism_when-the-washington-post-telephoned-me-a_185131.jpg) > [“Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/shrouded-as-he-was-for-a-decade-in-an-apparent-cloak-of-anonymity-and/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/85c/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_shrouded-as-he-was-for-a-decade-in-an-ap_2781110.jpg) > [“Edward genially enough did not dis agree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/edward-genially-enough-did-not-dis-agree-with-what-i-said-but-he-didn/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f01/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_edward-genially-enough-did-not-dis-agree_2848799.jpg) > [“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given'…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/every-november-of-my-boyhood-we-put-on-red-poppies-and-attended/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6de/christopher-hitchens-117_boyhood_every-november-of-my-boyhood-we-put-on-r_2916009.jpg) > [“As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-the-early-1980s-at-the/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4c5/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-t_183996.jpg) > [“Suppose that we agree that the two atrocities can or may be mentioned in the same breath. Why should we do so?…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/suppose-that-we-agree-that-the-two-atrocities-can-or-may-be-mentioned/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a97/christopher-hitchens-117_1998_suppose-that-we-agree-that-the-two-atroc_803135.jpg) > [“It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-can-certainly-be-misleading-to-take-the-attributes-of-a-movement/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/867/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_it-can-certainly-be-misleading-to-take-t_61390.jpg) > [“Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/hitherto-the-palestinians-had-been-relatively-immune-to-this-allahu/) [Christopher Hitchens](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-hitchens/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a88/christopher-hitchens-117_1981_hitherto-the-palestinians-had-been-relat_2564837.jpg) ## Other authors on Theocracy - [ ![](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/uploads/sms4s/authors/processed/b017/author-matt-smith-65496.jpg) Matt Smith 5 quotes ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/matt-smith/) ## 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/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/christopher-hitchens/#itemlist", "name": "11 Theocracy Quotes By Christopher Hitchens", "numberOfItems": 11, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“ Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-life-the-women-of-afghanistan/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/27c/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-l_1436841.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/27c/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-l_1436841.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/27c/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-l_1436841.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Who are your favorite heroines in real life? 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Not even Afghanistan or Somalia, scenes of the furthest advances yet made by pro-caliphate forces, could be governed for long in this way without setting new standards for beggary and decline.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/like-the-nazis-the-cadres-of-jihad-have-a-death-wish-that-sets-the/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55a/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_like-the-nazis-the-cadres-of-jihad-have_2372899.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55a/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_like-the-nazis-the-cadres-of-jihad-have_2372899.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/55a/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_like-the-nazis-the-cadres-of-jihad-have_2372899.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Like the Nazis, the cadres of jihad have a death wish that sets the seal on their nihilism. 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The pathetic vestiges of this can still be seen, in modern societies, in the efforts made by religion to secure control over education, or to exempt itself from tax, or to pass laws forbidding people to insult its omnipotent and omniscient deity, or even his prophet.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/many-religions-now-come-before-us-with-ingratiating-smirks-and-2/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/187/christopher-hitchens-117_blasphemy_many-religions-now-come-before-us-with-i_3150562.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/187/christopher-hitchens-117_blasphemy_many-religions-now-come-before-us-with-i_3150562.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/187/christopher-hitchens-117_blasphemy_many-religions-now-come-before-us-with-i_3150562.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah , I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/when-the-washington-post-telephoned-me-at-home-on-valentine-s-day/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6d8/christopher-hitchens-117_atheism_when-the-washington-post-telephoned-me-a_185131.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6d8/christopher-hitchens-117_atheism_when-the-washington-post-telephoned-me-a_185131.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6d8/christopher-hitchens-117_atheism_when-the-washington-post-telephoned-me-a_185131.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/shrouded-as-he-was-for-a-decade-in-an-apparent-cloak-of-anonymity-and/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/85c/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_shrouded-as-he-was-for-a-decade-in-an-ap_2781110.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/85c/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_shrouded-as-he-was-for-a-decade-in-an-ap_2781110.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/85c/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_shrouded-as-he-was-for-a-decade-in-an-ap_2781110.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 6, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Edward genially enough did not dis agree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the ad hominem to point out that his life—the life of the mind, the life of the book collector and music lover and indeed of the gallery-goer, appreciator of the feminine and occasional boulevardier —would become simply unlivable and unthinkable in an Islamic republic. Again, he could accede politely to my point but carry on somehow as if nothing had been conceded. I came slowly to realize that with Edward, too, I was keeping two sets of books. We agreed on things like the first Palestinian intifadah , another event that took the Western press completely off guard, and we collaborated on a book of essays that asserted and defended Palestinian rights. This was in the now hard-to-remember time when all official recognition was withheld from the PLO. Together we debated Professor Bernard Lewis and Leon Wieseltier at a once-celebrated conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Cambridge in 1986, tossing and goring them somewhat in a duel over academic 'objectivity' in the wider discipline. But even then I was indistinctly aware that Edward didn't feel himself quite at liberty to say certain things, while at the same time feeling rather too much obliged to say certain other things. A low point was an almost uncritical profile of Yasser Arafat that he contributed to Interview magazine in the late 1980s.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/edward-genially-enough-did-not-dis-agree-with-what-i-said-but-he-didn/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f01/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_edward-genially-enough-did-not-dis-agree_2848799.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f01/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_edward-genially-enough-did-not-dis-agree_2848799.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f01/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_edward-genially-enough-did-not-dis-agree_2848799.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Edward genially enough did not dis agree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 7, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/every-november-of-my-boyhood-we-put-on-red-poppies-and-attended/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6de/christopher-hitchens-117_boyhood_every-november-of-my-boyhood-we-put-on-r_2916009.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6de/christopher-hitchens-117_boyhood_every-november-of-my-boyhood-we-put-on-r_2916009.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6de/christopher-hitchens-117_boyhood_every-november-of-my-boyhood-we-put-on-r_2916009.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 8, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was arguably less so. (Edward incautiously dismissed 'speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings or sabotage commercial airliners' as the feverish product of 'highly exaggerated stereotypes.') Covering Islam took as its point of departure the Iranian revolution, which by then had been fully counter-revolutionized by the forces of the Ayatollah. Yes, it was true that the Western press—which was one half of the pun about 'covering'—had been naïve if not worse about the Pahlavi regime. Yes, it was true that few Middle East 'analysts' had had any concept of the latent power of Shi'ism to create mass mobilization. Yes, it was true that almost every stage of the Iranian drama had come as a complete surprise to the media. But wasn't it also the case that Iranian society was now disappearing into a void of retrogressive piety that had levied war against Iranian Kurdistan and used medieval weaponry such as stoning and amputation against its internal critics, or even against those like unveiled women whose very existence constituted an offense?”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-the-early-1980s-at-the/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4c5/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-t_183996.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4c5/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-t_183996.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4c5/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-t_183996.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 9, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Suppose that we agree that the two atrocities can or may be mentioned in the same breath. Why should we do so? I wrote at the time ( The Nation , October 5, 1998) that Osama bin Laden 'hopes to bring a \"judgmental\" monotheism of his own to bear on these United States.' Chomsky's recent version of this is 'considering the grievances expressed by people of the Middle East region.' In my version, then as now, one confronts an enemy who wishes ill to our society, and also to his own (if impermeable religious despotism is considered an 'ill'). In Chomsky's reading, one must learn to sift through the inevitable propaganda and emotion resulting from the September 11 attacks, and lend an ear to the suppressed and distorted cry for help that comes, not from the victims, but from the perpetrators. I have already said how distasteful I find this attitude. I wonder if even Chomsky would now like to have some of his own words back? Why else should he take such care to quote himself deploring the atrocity? Nobody accused him of not doing so. It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/suppose-that-we-agree-that-the-two-atrocities-can-or-may-be-mentioned/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a97/christopher-hitchens-117_1998_suppose-that-we-agree-that-the-two-atroc_803135.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a97/christopher-hitchens-117_1998_suppose-that-we-agree-that-the-two-atroc_803135.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a97/christopher-hitchens-117_1998_suppose-that-we-agree-that-the-two-atroc_803135.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Suppose that we agree that the two atrocities can or may be mentioned in the same breath. Why should we do…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 10, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or 'objectify' them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like 'Stalinism,' say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/it-can-certainly-be-misleading-to-take-the-attributes-of-a-movement/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/867/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_it-can-certainly-be-misleading-to-take-t_61390.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/867/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_it-can-certainly-be-misleading-to-take-t_61390.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/867/christopher-hitchens-117_2011_it-can-certainly-be-misleading-to-take-t_61390.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 11, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/hitherto-the-palestinians-had-been-relatively-immune-to-this-allahu/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a88/christopher-hitchens-117_1981_hitherto-the-palestinians-had-been-relat_2564837.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a88/christopher-hitchens-117_1981_hitherto-the-palestinians-had-been-relat_2564837.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a88/christopher-hitchens-117_1981_hitherto-the-palestinians-had-been-relat_2564837.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/christopher-hitchens/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/christopher-hitchens/", "name": "Theocracy Quotes by Christopher Hitchens", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/christopher-hitchens/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/27c/christopher-hitchens-117_afghanistan_who-are-your-favorite-heroines-in-real-l_1436841.jpg" }, "description": "11 Theocracy quotes by Christopher Hitchens. Plus more from Christopher Hitchens and more Theocracy sayings from other authors.", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/christopher-hitchens/#breadcrumb" } }, { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/christopher-hitchens/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Quotes", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Topics", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/categories/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Theocracy", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "name": "Christopher Hitchens", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/theocracy/christopher-hitchens/" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website", "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/", "publisher": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } }, { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization", "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/themes/sq/assets/icons/icon-512.png", "width": 512, "height": 512 } } ] } ```