137 quotes
Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam!
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.
Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007)
Three words for those who want to put the Christ back in Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock.
(Howard) Dean is a raving nut bag...a raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag...I and a few other people saw that he should be destroyed.
Friends, we represent a minority, but Literature is on our side. With so many fine books to be read, so much to be studied and known, there is no need to bore ourselves with this rubbish.
And Yet...: Essays (2015)
It [Obama's Nobel peace prize] would be like giving someone an Oscar in the hope that it would encourage them to make a decent motion picture.
"The Twilight of Panzerkommunismus" (1988).
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
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.
The polls undoubtedly help to decide what people think, but their most important long-term influence may be on how people think. The interrogative process is very distinctly weighted against the asking of an intelligent question or the recording of a thoughtful answer.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
"Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age" was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals... But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed OUT of the Stone Age.
The pornography of tough-mindedness, covert action, and preparedness for "peace through strength" has had a predictably hypnotic effect on the legislative branch, turning it from legal watchdog to lapdog.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
The (Catholic) church, as far as I know, has not endorsed any war as just since it supported General Franco's invasion of Spain to destroy the Spanish republic with a Muslim mercenary army in the thirties, on the side of Hitler.
Most of our British Muslim population is Pakistani. If that population was Indonesian or Tunisian the situation would not be the same. Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.
It must be obvious to anyone who can think at all that the charges against the Hussein regime are, as concerns arsenals of genocidal weaponry, true.
We Must Fight Iraq (2002)
Humans should not worship other humans at all, but if they must do so it is better that the worshipped ones do not occupy any positions of political power.
Hitchens: And that's where it stops, or you think this creator cares about you too?
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
I can never quite decide whether the anti-Columbus movement is merely risible or faintly sinister... It is sinister, though, because it is an ignorant celebration of stasis and backwardness, with an unpleasant tinge of self-hatred.
Minority Report (1992)
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.
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)