it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists
Interpretation
This quote critiques individuals who compare their beliefs to extreme historical regimes to justify their positions.
Christopher Hitchens highlights a paradoxical tendency among some individuals of faith who, when challenged, resort to defensively asserting that they are not as morally reprehensible as figures like fascists, Nazis, or Stalinists. This suggests a self-awareness of their beliefs, yet also a troubling effort to mitigate criticism by drawing comparisons with historically violent ideologies, rather than asserting the positive values that faith should ideally embody.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in society, one might reference this quote to discuss the moral implications of belief systems.
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.
Action hangs, as it were, dissolved in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.
Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.
To use what has a boundary to pursue what is limitless is dangerous; with this knowledge, if we still go after knowledge, we will run into trouble. Do not do what is good in order to gain praise. If you do what is bad be sure to avoid the punishment. Follow the Middle Course, for this is the way to keep yourself together, to sustain your life, to care for your parents and to live for many years.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.
Whether as victim, demon, or hero, the industrial worker of the past century filled the public imagination in books, movies, news stories, and even popular songs, putting a grimy human face on capitalism while dramatizing the social changes and conflicts it brought.
My days β the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood β have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land β in the land of my sires β I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.
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