Christopher Hitchens citáty (311 citátů, strana 7)

Christopher Hitchens: 311 citátů 11 lajků

Christopher Hitchens nejznámější citáty

„To, co může být tvrzeno bez důkazů, může být bez nich také odmítnuto.“

Christopher Hitchens

„Jedním z důvodů, proč rád debatuji s věřícími, je, že nikdy nevíte, co řeknou příště.“

Christopher Hitchens

Zdroj: HITCHENS, Christopher. Is there an afterlife?. [Diskuze se Samem Harrisem a rabíny Davidem Wolpem a Bradleym Artsonem Shavitem]. 15. 2. 2011. Videozáznam http://www.jewishtvnetwork.com/?bcpid=533363107&bctid=802338105001 (anglicky).

„Jsem opravdu rád, že ve skutečnosti neexistuje žádný neustálý, neotřesitelný, nevyvratitelný božský dohled – božská Severní Korea, v níž žádné soukromí ani žádná svoboda nepřichází v úvahu od okamžiku početí a nikoli do okamžiku smrti, ale i poté. Byl jsem v Severní Koreji a vím tedy, jak by zbožný stát vypadal. Vím, jak by to vypadalo modlit se k Bohu od rána do večera. Viděl jsem to na vlastní oči. A je to ta nejodpornější, nejdepresivněší a nezbytečnější bezduchá věc, kterou si můžete představit. Ale v Severní Koreji můžet aspoň zemřít nebo odejít. Křesťanství Vám tohle nedovolí…“

Christopher Hitchens

Zdroj: HITCHENS, Christopher. Is God Great?. [Diskuze s Alem Sharptonem]. 7. 5. 2007. Videozáznam http://fora.tv/2007/05/07/Al_Sharpton_and_Christopher_Hitchens, přepis http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.cz/2010/11/hitchens-vs-sharpton-new-york-public.html (anglicky).

„Po stovky a tisíce let by se tahle diskuze [mezi věřícími a ateisty] na většině míst nemohla odehrát, resp. bychom Sam [Harris] a já při tom riskovali život. Teď za námi náboženství přichází s tímhle úlisně usměvavým výrazem, protože muselo opravdu hodně ustoupit a protože toho nyní mnohem víc víme. Nezapomínejte však, jak se chovalo, když bylo silné a když skutečně věřilo, že Bůh je na jeho straně.“

Christopher Hitchens

„V tomhle případě nelpí důkazní břemeno na nás [ateistech]. My neříkáme, že nevíra v Boha vás učiní lepšími nebo mravnějšími. My odporujeme těm, kdo říkají, že víra v jakousi neprokazatelnou nadpřirozenou bytost vás učiní mravnějšími. A o tom víme, že to není pravda.“

Christopher Hitchens

„Věřím, že kde končí náboženství, začíná filozofie; kde končí alchymie, začíná chemie; kde končí astrologie, začíná astronomie; a teď by lidé začali říkat: „ Dejme ve školách stejný prostor astrologii." To je nesmysl – nebezpečný a zlověstný.“

Christopher Hitchens

k výuce náboženství na školách
Zdroj: HITCHENS, Christopher. Is God Great?. [Diskuze s Alem Sharptonem]. 7. 5. 2007. Videozáznam http://fora.tv/2007/05/07/Al_Sharpton_and_Christopher_Hitchens, přepis http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.cz/2010/11/hitchens-vs-sharpton-new-york-public.html (anglicky).

Christopher Hitchens: Citáty anglicky

“It was an axiom of "containment" that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. "Neutralism" was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological — and sometimes military — pressure to fall into line.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"How Neo-Conservatives Perish" (1990).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“It‘s [Fahrenheit 9/11] the work of a moral cretin and a political idiot. And it's up to the Democratic National Committee to say, do they want to continue being photographed with this man as we go into a very important election, not just in the United States, I might add, but first Democratic elections to be held in Iraq and in Afghanistan? In a few months, we will know the outcome of all these. In all three cases, Michael Moore says that the enemy is George Bush and Saddam Hussein and Mr. Zarqawi and Mr. Bin Laden are no problem. Indeed, they are—what a wonderful way to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend, by the way. Indeed, they are the Minutemen. They‘re the staunch American revolutionaries. Does he tell this to the widows that he goes and exploits?”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"Scarborough Country on MNSBC" http://web.archive.org/web/20070911061520/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5344115/, (2004-06-30): On Michael Moore
2000s, 2004

“Three words for those who want to put the Christ back in Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-24
Christopher Hitchens on The True Spirit of Christmas
The Wall Street Jorunal
0099-9660
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577110880355067656.html
2010s, 2011

“Inanity is pretending that Afghanistan will go away if we leave.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

Morning Meeting on MSNBC http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/?p=4373 (2009-12-04): On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2009

“Taking the points in order, it's fairly easy to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy's bad guy. He's not just bad in himself but the cause of badness in others. While he survives not only are the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples compelled to live in misery and fear (the sheerly moral case for regime-change is unimpeachable on its own), but their neighbors are compelled to live in fear as well.

However—and here is the clinching and obvious point—Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences—Sunni-Shi'a rivalry, conflict over the boundaries of Kurdistan, possible meddling from Turkey or Iran, vertiginous fluctuations in oil prices and production, social chaos—are attributable only to intervention is to be completely blind to the impending reality. The choices are two and only two—to experience these consequences with an American or international presence or to watch them unfold as if they were none of our business.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

2002-11-07
Machiavelli in Mesopotamia
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2002/11/machiavelli_in_mesopotamia.html: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2002

“To describe this film [Fahrenheit 9/11] as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore.
2000s, 2004

“Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

2002-11-18
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074129
Terrorism: Notes toward a definition
Slate
1091-2339
2000s, 2002

“…in fact, the war against Iraq is continuing. And it's continuing now by the means which the administration described as contemptible and useless, when they were put forth as an alternative to an actual all-out aerial bombardment. Namely, economic sanctions, which do have the effect of slowly starving and crippling the population of Iraq, while leaving the military caste of Saddam Hussein and his criminal Baath Party in charge. I was asked the other day … why do you think the administration decided to spare Saddam Hussein … and I said I think because they thought they might need him again…”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

1992
NPR
Talk of the Nation with John Hockenberry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcXsync4bD8
1990s

“Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"A View from the Patriotic Left" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F01E41CB-A584-4597-B9BE-86BBD9B3F7A1, Boston Globe (2002-09-09)]: On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2002

“My challenge is really to say, 'Can you name me a moral action or a statement that has been made by a believer that couldn't have been made by a non-believer?”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

The Rise of Atheism, ABC News, 30 September 2007, 1 September 2015 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3671172,
Alternate version: Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.
2007-11-01
Excerpt from The Portable Atheist
USA Today
0161-7389
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/excerpts/2007-11-01-portable-atheist_N.htm
Hitchens posed this challenge many times in debate or during lectures, variously phrased, claiming no one had ever been able to pass it, although everyone could easily answer the corollary question: "Could you name a wicked action or a vile statement made by someone, attributable only to their religious faith?"
Christopher Hitchens Moral Challenge to the god fearing religious folks, YouTube, 20 June 2009, 1 September 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqFwree7Kak,
2000s, 2007

“The metaphor of the watch was very much used by the deists. And of course, watches run down, and break down, and it was believed by many of them that if an intelligence had begun the universe, begun the process, he'd took no further interest in it - didn't intervene in human affairs, didn't mind who won the war, didn't mind which country was the leading one, watched with relative—well, or didn't watch—with indifference, plague, famine, war and so forth. That's a very hard position to oppose, by the way. It's impossible, actually, to disprove - one can only the evidence for it isn't quite strong enough to be persuasive. To be a theist, to be a member of a monotheistic religion, that believes that truth has been revealed, that god has intervened in human affairs, that he has a plan for us - each of as individually and as a species, and that it shows - is a very much more difficult undertaking. I'm gonna show why I think it's more or less impossible.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=9m23s
2010s, 2010

“Some people say that without God, people would give themselves permission to do anything. [Yet] only with God, only with the view that God’s on your side, can people give themselves permission to do things that otherwise would be called satanic.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

Freedom From Religion Foundation, 21/10/2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6WByhz44EA&t=4m25s
2000s, 2007

“…those who say I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

Zdroj: 2010s, 2011, Mortality (2012), p. 88.

“As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be "me." (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

II.
2010s, 2011, Mortality (2012)

“The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. "Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process?"”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"Politically Correct" (1991).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"Nixon: Maestro of Resentment" (1990).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“It is rather a pity, considered from the standpoint of the professional politician or opinion-taker, that nobody knows exactly what "credibility" is, or how one acquires it. "Credibility" doesn't stand for anything morally straightforward, like meaning what you say or saying what you mean. Nor does it signify anything remotely quantifiable — any correlation between evidence presented and case made. Suggestively, perhaps, it entered the language as a consensus euphemism during the Vietnam War, when "concerned" members of the Eastern Establishment spoke of a "credibility gap" rather than give awful utterance to the thought that the Johnson administration was systematically lying. To restore its "credibility," that administration was urged — not to stop lying, but to improve its public presentation. At some stage in the lesson learned from that injunction, the era of postmodern politics began. It doesn't seem ridiculous now to have "approval ratings" that fluctuate from week to week, because these are based upon the all-important "perception" factor, which has in turn quite lost its own relationship to the word "perceptive."”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"Credibility Politics: Sado-Monetarist Economics" (1989).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“I’m quite convinced in my own mind that those who were arguing that [the need to intervene in Iraq] was a more immediate one than some believed - were I’m sure convinced that they were right on fact, I don’t think they were making it up. So as to lying, I don’t think it has been established that any lies were told.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

Scotland Live (2005-10-31): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2005

“Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays (Nation Books, 2004): On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2004

“There is a reason for the affected profession of "anarchist sympathies" among Tories and grandees, and of "libertarian principles" by Hobbesian yahoos of the right. Among the former, one sees the upholding of the view that a gentleman's business and property are his own, and none of the government's. Among the latter, a distaste for democracy, for taxation, and for the need to consult others about the planet.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"Shouting Anarchy" (1989).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2004

“We can be as sure as we could probably need be that neither this enormous explosion that set the universe in motion, which is still moving away from us at a great rate, nor this amazingly complex billion year period of evolution, we can be pretty certain it was not designed so that you and I could be meeting in this room. We are not the objects of either of these plans. These plans don’t know we’re here. I’m sorry to say, wouldn’t know or care if we stopped being here. We have to face this alone with the equipment, intellectual and moral, that we’ve been given, or that we've acquired, or that is innate to us.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

Authors@Google, August 16, 2007, YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs.
2000s, 2007

“The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has — from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

http://hnn.us/articles/1881.html
Interview with Christopher Hitchens
Jamie
Glazov
History News Network
2003-12-22
2000s, 2003

“Do I, who've read Freud, know what the Future of an Illusion really is and know that religious belief is ineradicable as long as we remain a stupid, poorly-evolved mammalian species, think that some Canadian law is gonna solve this problem? Please. No, our problem is this: our pre-frontal lobes are too small, and our adrenalin glands are too big, and our thumb-finger opposition isn't all that it might be, and we're afraid of the dark, and we're afraid to die, and we believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can - and all children do, as you can tell by their questions - actually see through them. And I think it should be (religion) treated with ridicule and hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&t=15m49s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

“Read one page of Stephen Hawking about the event horizon, about the possibility that we will soon know, not where the universe originated, but where it is tended, and the event horizon to which we may all be headed. There is more to inspire awe in one page of Stephen Hawking, than in any of the fantasies of Tertullian, imagining that he could go to the window of heaven, when he was promoted there, and look down, for his consolation, on the torments of the damned. There is much more to be awe-inspired by, in a page of Hawking, than in any number of burning bushes, or other such myths.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

“Then the big white whale, Clinton. What about someone who is a war criminal, a taker of bribes from foreign dictatorships, almost certainly a rapist (plausibly accused, anyway, by three believable women, of rape), executed a black man (Ricky Ray Rector) who was so mentally retarded that he was unable to plead or to understand the charges — You're against all that, right? But you're for it when it's someone who you think is a "New Democrat."”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"Conversations with History: A Dissenting Voice" http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Elberg/Hitchens/hitchens-con4.html, interview by Harry Kreisler (2002-04-25).
2000s, 2002

“The stand of the "realist" school, and its objections to further or faster involvement in the Libya crisis, can be fairly summarized…The actual evidence, however, is that Qaddafi senior has reached his Ceausescu moment: a full-dress (in the literal sense) meltdown into paranoia, megalomania, and delusion. His recent speeches and appearances have shown him stinking with madness and hysteria. His age and condition, at any rate, set a very sharp limit to the duration of his regime. If that regime implodes while he is still "in place," then all the grim consequences foreseen by the realists will be incurred in any case. Weapons will get into the wrong hands; divide-and-rule tactics (already a stock in trade) will intensify; religious and tribal passions will be deliberately inflamed. The main difference will be that we merely watched this happen.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

2010s, 2011

“There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz.”

Help us translate this quote

Christopher Hitchens

"Tariq Ali v. Christopher Hitchens: A Debate on the U.S. War on Iraq, the Bush-Kerry Race and the Neo-Conservative Movement" http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/12/1347208&mode=thread&tid=25, Democracy Now (2004-10-12).
2000s, 2004