It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the paradox of certainty, suggesting that the only true certainty is the existence of uncertainty.
Christopher Hitchens' quote emphasizes the idea that while we often seek certainties in life, the only absolute truth is that life is filled with uncertainties. This perspective challenges our desire for fixed answers, suggesting that we should embrace the unpredictable nature of existence.
In practice
During a philosophical debate about the nature of life.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Im waiting, for what, my kind of people, what kind is that, i can tell my kind of people by their faces, by something in their faces.
For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in which—by means of a sort of snapshot—we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it.
Food is a weapon in austerity Britain. Hunger, the threat of and the reality of, is used to coerce and control.
This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse.
Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line
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