Christopher Hitchens

Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.

It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties.

I became a journalist because I didn't want to have to rely on the press for information... I only read it to make sure of whatever everyone else thinks is going on, because it's useful to know what people think is the news.

What word or expression do you most overuse? Re-reading a collection of my stuff, I was rather startled to find that it was 'perhaps.

The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.

To describe this film 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.

The crucial distinction between systems...was no longer ideological. The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could -- or should -- be the property of the state.

What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.

My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.

Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.

Hero­ism breaks its heart, and ide­al­ism its back, on the intran­si­gence of the cred­u­lous and the mediocre, manip­u­lated by the cyn­i­cal and the corrupt.

I am, I hope, never offensive by accident.

I have often thought that when I do die it will be of sheer boredom.

I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.

The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.

If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

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!

Where would you like to live? In a state of conflict or a conflicted state?

How do I know that I know this, except that I've always been taught this and never heard anything else? [...] How sure am I of my own views? Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be okay, because you're in the safely moral majority.

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.