Christopher Hitchens Quotes About Atheism

Quotes about: Atheism

• I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Atheist, Atheism

• Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Uplifting, Strong, Atheist

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.51, Atlantic Books Ltd

• To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Vintage, Doubt

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.264, Atlantic Books Ltd

• How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Country, Atheist, Atheism

• Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.253, Atlantic Books Ltd

• I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Ideas, Mind

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.299, Atlantic Books Ltd

• Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Atheism, Important

• What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Atheist

• Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Science, Ideas

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.13, Atlantic Books Ltd

• Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Believe, Animal

  "Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (Holier Than Thou)". TV Series, May 23, 2005.

• The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Motivational, Atheist, Religion

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.75, Atlantic Books Ltd

• The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Motivational, Song, Atheist

  Christopher Hitchens (2007). “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”, p.480, Da Capo Press

• Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Atheism, Conclusion

• We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Stupid, Selfish

• Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Giving Up, Believe, Religion

• We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Stupid, Men

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “Arguably”, p.392, Atlantic Books Ltd

• Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Islamic, Support

• I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Real, Godly

• Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Atheism, Christianity

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.38, Atlantic Books Ltd

• I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Hatred, Religion, Atheism

• Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Men, Atheism

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.96, Atlantic Books Ltd

• Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Sacrifice, Law

  "Facing Death, Christopher Hitchens Affirms Atheism" by Ethan Cole, www.christianpost.com. April 25, 2011.

• Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Science, Religion

• There are, after all, atheists who say they wish the fable were true but are unable to suspend the requisite disbelief, or who have relinquished belief only with regret. To this I reply: who wishes that there was a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of thought-crime, and who regarded us as its private property even after we died? How happy we ought to be, at the reflection that there exists not a shred of respectable evidence to support such a horrible hypothesis.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Regret, Reflection

  Christopher Hitchens (2007). “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever”, p.17, Hachette UK

• [Religion] attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Determination, Integrity, Self

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