The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the absurdity of bureaucratic rules in contrast to personal misfortune.
Christopher Hitchens points out the irony and impracticality of societal norms, suggesting that when faced with a serious crime like being mugged, the bureaucratic requirement of identification can become a significant barrier to personal safety and returning to normal life. The remark critiques the way systems can sometimes fail to support individuals in dire situations.
In practice
In a discussion about travel inconveniences, this quote can illustrate the complexities of modern 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 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.
If I didn't care about doing right and didn't feel uncomfortable doing wrong, I should get on capitally.
Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.
The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle.
All things are cause for either laughter or weeping.
May I not come before You with empty hands, since we are rewarded according to our deeds.
We know a thing by its opposite corollary; hot by having experienced cold; good by having decided what is bad; love by hate.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.