--- title: "4 1980s Quotes By Christopher Hitchens" description: "4 1980s quotes by Christopher Hitchens. Plus more from Christopher Hitchens and more 1980s sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4c5/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-t_183996.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) > [“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) > [“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) > [“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) ## 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/zz-1980s/christopher-hitchens/#itemlist", "name": "4 1980s Quotes By Christopher Hitchens", "numberOfItems": 4, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "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": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "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.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/very-often-the-test-of-one-s-allegiance-to-a-cause-or-to-a-people-is/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/12e/christopher-hitchens-117_1950s_very-often-the-test-of-one-s-allegiance_369954.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/12e/christopher-hitchens-117_1950s_very-often-the-test-of-one-s-allegiance_369954.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/12e/christopher-hitchens-117_1950s_very-often-the-test-of-one-s-allegiance_369954.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "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.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Hitchens" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-hitchens/question-which-mediterranean-government-shares-all-of-ronald-reagan-s/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/992/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_question-which-mediterranean-government_1897354.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/992/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_question-which-mediterranean-government_1897354.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/992/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_question-which-mediterranean-government_1897354.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the…” — Christopher Hitchens", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "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": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/zz-1980s/christopher-hitchens/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/zz-1980s/christopher-hitchens/", "name": "1980s Quotes by Christopher Hitchens", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/zz-1980s/christopher-hitchens/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4c5/christopher-hitchens-117_1980s_as-he-defended-the-book-one-evening-in-t_183996.jpg" }, "description": "4 1980s quotes by Christopher Hitchens. Plus more from Christopher Hitchens and more 1980s sayings from other authors.", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/zz-1980s/christopher-hitchens/#breadcrumb" } }, { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/zz-1980s/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": "Zz 1980s", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/zz-1980s/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "name": "Christopher Hitchens", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/zz-1980s/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 } } ] } ```