The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the value of uncertainty and the pursuit of knowledge over the allure of absolute security and faith.
Christopher Hitchens argues that a life anchored in certainty and impermeable faith is less valuable than one that embraces uncertainty and the pursuit of knowledge. He suggests that by accepting not knowing everything, one opens themselves up to continuous learning and personal growth, living life on the edge of discovery and insight.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire students at a graduation ceremony about the importance of lifelong learning.
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.
It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me.
What soon grows old? Gratitude.
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.
A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself
Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.
I learned a long time ago that advice is a quick trip to nowhere. It's the commitment that only you can make in yourself, the responsibility to assume control of yourself.
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