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.
Interpretation
Focus on the task at hand rather than questioning its enjoyment.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens emphasizes the importance of engaging fully in activities without second-guessing whether they are enjoyable. He suggests that constantly evaluating the fun factor can detract from the experience and that one should immerse themselves in what they are doing rather than seek external validation or approval from others.
In practice
In a team meeting when discussing project ideas, you might say this quote to encourage focus on the goals.
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.
[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.
I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.
The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?
O life! An age to the miserable, a moment to the happy.
We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny . . . I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.
Dead men do not cooperate with grace. Unless regeneration takes place first, there is no possibility of faith.
For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.
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