Christopher Hitchens.

Dickens Was Able to Mine This Huge Resource of London Life, Becoming the Conductor and Chronicler Like Nobody Since Shakespeare Himself.

Human Decency Is Not the Result of Religion, It Precedes It.

Those Who Offer False Consolation Are False Friends.

The Literal Mind Cannot Understand the Ironic One.

On His Death, Pope John Paul Was Praised Among Other Things for the Number of Apologies He Had Made… This Seemed to Say That the Church Had Mainly Been Wrong and Often Criminal in the Past, but Was Now Purged of Its Sin by Confession and Quite Ready to Be Infallible All Over Again.

You Know, You Can Make a Small Mistake in Language or Etiquette in Britain, or You Could When I Was Younger, and Really Be Made to Feel It, and It’s the Flick of a Lash, but It Would Sting, and Especially at School Where There’s Not Much Privacy, and so On. You Could, Yes, Undoubtedly Be Made to Feel Crushed.

All the Excitements of a Prohibited Book Had Their Usual Effect, One of Which, as Always, Is to Expose the Fact That the Censors Don’t Know What They Are Talking About.

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.

Mockery of Religion Is One of the Most Essential Things… One of the Beginnings of Human Emancipation Is the Ability to Laugh at Authority.

Religion, It Is True, Still Possesses the Huge If Cumbersome and Unwieldy Advantage of Having Come First.

The Progress That’s Made… in Any Argument or in Any Discussion Is by Confrontation. That’s a Dialectical Fact. People Say Oh Let’s Have Less Heat and More Light, Fatuously. There’s Only One Source of Light. It Happens to Be Heat.

Like Most People Who Claim to Be Apolitical, Mother Teresa Is in Practice and in Theory an Ally of the Status Quo. and When the Status Quo Is Threatened, a Trusted Ally of the Conservative Forces.

Modesty, Simplicity, Humility. by These Canonical Key Words We Are Taught That We May Recognize Saints. yet Mother Teresa Regards Herself as Mandated by Heaven, Which Is Hardly Modest. She Lends Spiritual Solace to Dictators and to Wealthy Exploiters Which Is Scarcely the Essence of Simplicity. and She Preaches Surrender and Prostration to the Poor Which a Truly Humble Person Would Barely Have the Nerve to Do. When She Speaks About Private or Public Morality, Opposing Family Planning for Example, or Defining Abortion as Quite Literally the Greatest Threat to World Peace, She Takes on the Grim and Tedious Tones of the Zealot and the Fanatic. in a Godless and Cynical Age It May Be Inevitable That People Will Seek to Praise the Self Effacing, the Altruistic and the Pure in Heart, but Only a Complete Collapse of Our Critical Faculties Can Explain the Illusion That Such a Person Is Manifested in the Shape of a Demagogue, an Obscurantist and a Servant of Earthly Powers.

Our Belief Is Not a Belief. Our Principles Are Not a Faith. We Do Not Rely Soley Upon Science and Reason, Because These Are Necessary Rather Than Sufficient Factors, but We Distrust Anything That Contradicts Science or Outrages Reason. We May Differ on Many Things, but What We Respect Is Free Inquiry, Openmindedness, and the Pursuit of Ideas for Their Own Sake.

I Became a Journalist Because I Didn’t Want to Have to Rely on Newspapers for My Information.

If the Qur’an Was the Word of God, It Had Been Dictated on a Very Bad Day.

Islam in Its Origins Is Just as Shady and Approximate as Those from Which It Took Its Borrowings. It Makes Immense Claims for Itself, Invokes Prostrate Submission or Surrender as a Maxim to Its Adherents, and Demands Deference and Respect from Nonbelievers into the Bargain. There Is Nothing Absolutely Nothing in Its Teachings That Can Even Begin to Justify Such Arrogance and Presumption.

There Is a Story of a Boor Who Kept Boasting of a Great Leap He’d Made in Rhodes. Finally, Someone Confronted Him: Hic Rhodus. Hic Salta. Here Is Rhodes, Leap Here.

A Cruel or Rude Child Is a Ghastly Thing, but a Cruel or Brutal Parent Can Do Infinitely More Harm.

In the Brute Physical World, and the One Encompassed by Medicine, There Are All Too Many Things That Could Kill You, Don’t Kill You, and Then Leave You Considerably Weaker.

It’s Considered Acceptable in Our Culture to Approach Perfect Strangers, as Often or Not Who May Be in Extremis, and Evangelize. I Don’t See Why That’s Considered a Normal Thing.

Remember Islam Makes One Special Claim for Itself. All Religions Claim to Be Revealed Truth. All Are Founded by Divine Revelation. but Islam Rather Dangerously Says: Ours Is the Last and Final One. There Can’t Be Any More After This. This Is God’s Last Word. Now That’s Straightaway a Temptation to Violence and Intolerance And, If You Note, a Temptation They Seem Quite Willing to Fall For.

You Notice How Liberals Keep Saying, ‘If Only Islam Would Have a Reformation’ It Can’t Have One. It Says It Can’t. It’s Extremely Dangerous in That Way.

If the Intended Reader of This Book Should Want to Go Beyond Disagreement with Its Author and Try to Identify the Sins and Deformities That Animated Him to Write It, and I Have Certainly Noticed That Those Who Publicly Affirm Charity and Compassion and Forgiveness Are Often Inclined to Take This Course, Then He or She Will Not Just Be Quarreling with the Unknowable and Ineffable Creator Who Presumably Opted to Make Me This Way…

If I Believed That There Was a Savior Who Had Been Appointed or Sent by or a Prophet Appointed or Sent by a God Who Bore Me in Mind, and Loved Me, and Wanted the Best for Me, If I Believed That and That I Possessed the Means of Grace and the Hope of Glory, to Phrase It Like That, I Think, I Don’t Know, I Think I Might Be Happy. They Say It’s the Way to Happiness. Why Doesn’t It Make Them Happy? Don’t You Think It’s a Perfectly Decent Question? Why Doesn’t It? Because They Won’t Be Happy Until You Believe It Too. and Why Is That? Because That’s What Their Holy Books Tell Them. Now, I’m Sorry, It’s Enough with Saying in the Name of Religion. Do These Texts Say That Until Every Knee Bows in the Name of Jesus and so On, There Will Be No Happiness? of Course It Is What They Say. It Isn’t Just a Private Belief. It Is Rather, and I Think Always Has Been, and It’s Why I’m Here, Actually a Threat to the Idea of a Peaceable Community, and Very Often, as Now, and Frequently, a Very Palpable One.