Christopher Hitchens

"The only thing I am certain of is that I am uncertain."

"I have always been interested in why people believe what they believe."

"The greatest adventure is the life of the mind."

"I don't think there is anything more important than education."

"The only way to truly understand something is to question it."

"I have always believed that we should speak truth to power."

"The greatest tragedy is wasted potential."

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

"The person who is certain, and who never doubts, is often the one most likely to be wrong."

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself."

"Religion poisons everything."

"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you cannot make him think."

"The only real radicalism in this world will come from people who have absolutely nothing to lose."

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

"An infidel is one more faithful than the faithful, because he is faithful to the Earth."

"Demands for certainty are demands for authority that cannot be satisfied by evidence or argument."

"Civilization requires not just the absence of war, but the presence of justice."

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

"One must state it plainly: religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus—had the smallest idea what was going on."

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

"In the beginning, there was nothing, and it exploded."

"The purpose of the intellectual is to speak the truth to power."

"Every year, numerous people die from various causes; religious belief does not exempt them."

"Monotheism's need for an absolute authority mirrors totalitarianism's structure."

"If one must choose between organized religion and no religion, the choice becomes obvious."

"We are not going to remain quiet anymore about the exploitation of reason."

"The private individual should ask himself what sort of person he was before all his misadventures."

"You can't be a really happy person if you have never believed in anything worth suffering for."

"The totalitarian nature of religious conformity becomes visible upon examination."

"Human beings are not born with a debt to their parents or country."