I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.
Interpretation
Unbelief does not necessarily lead to good behavior or morals.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens emphasizes that a lack of belief in a deity does not inherently correlate with moral integrity or ethical behavior. He critiques the assumption that faith is the only source of morality, asserting that nonbelievers can possess good conduct, but it is not a given simply because one does not hold religious beliefs.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in morality, one could cite this quote to highlight nonbelievers' ethical frameworks.
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 β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve 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.
Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.
A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.
Remembrance is a form of meeting.
Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.
We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'
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