Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the struggle of idealism and heroism against the forces of mediocrity and cynicism in society.
Christopher Hitchens reflects on the heavy toll that idealism and heroism take when confronted by a society filled with credulous and mediocre individuals. It emphasizes how these virtues can be undermined and manipulated by those who are corrupt and cynical, pointing to a broader commentary on the challenges of aspiring for noble ideals in a flawed world.
In practice
During a speech about societal change, one might say, 'As Christopher Hitchens noted, heroism breaks its heart against the cynicism of society.'
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.
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your body and less of your raiment.
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.
To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.
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