Christopher Hitchens

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

"I like to think of myself as a political person who loves to write rather than a writer who happens to be political."

"The person who is certain, and who never doubts, is often actually the one who is wrong."

"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God."

"The only CDO of human stupidity is that there is no limit to it."

"Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it."

"Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or gods wrote down."

"Be prepared to die at any moment for your beliefs."

"If you try to argue that something is unknowable, you will have defined it while claiming it to be indefinable."

"One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory when nobody—not even the longest-living projects in the existent world—had the smallest idea what was going on."

"The eternal need for something to worship can't quite be abolished by the secular state."

"I am not a materialist and do not pursue money for its own sake."

"Cancer is now the only disease that I'm not afraid of."

"To the dumb question 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply 'Why not?'"

"I do not have the time to read all the books I want to read and I do not have the time to read, let alone to absorb, the contents of the vast number of articles and essays at which anyone interested in ideas must glance."

"The only thing that relieves stress is humor."

"We keep on being told that religion is not political. But of course that is just obvious nonsense."

"I remain a fierce partisan of the Enlightenment."

"There is no hell, and therefore there is hope."

"The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy—the one who wants control over the inside of your head."

"My own opinion is nonetheless that the materialist conception of history is the best explanation for human development."

"The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism."

"Beware of the irrational, however mighty it has always been."

"What is loathsome about theocracy is that it makes a virtue out of certainty."

"Nothing is given to anyone; the taking is all."

"The most educated person is the one who understands the most about the real world in which he/she lives."

"In the beginning, there was Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

"You can't be a sexist and a feminist and call yourself my friend."

"I don't think women are better than men, I think we're equal, but I do think the evidence is overwhelming."

"One should be able to criticize any idea, whether it is a religious idea or not."