Geburtsdatum | Mittwoch, 13. April 1949 |
Geburtsort | Portsmouth, Hampshire, England |
Todesort | Houston |
Sternzeichen | |
Beschreibung | Christopher Eric Hitchens (13. April 1949 - 15. Dezember 2011) war ein amerikanisch-britischer Autor und Journalist, der mehr als 30 Bücher (darunter fünf Essaysammlungen) über Kultur, Politik und Literatur schrieb oder herausgab. Geboren und aufgewachsen in England, arbeitete Hitchens nach seinem Studium in Oxford in den 1970er Jahren als Journalist für die Zeitschrift New Statesman in London. In den frühen 1980er Jahren emigrierte er in die Vereinigten Staaten und schrieb für The Nation und Vanity Fair. Hitchens starb im Dezember 2011 an Komplikationen im Zusammenhang mit Speiseröhrenkrebs. |
It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.
Well, I'll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.
I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope.
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.
People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,' and so forth, I switch off quite early.
The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.
A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.
Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.
One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.
I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.
Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
Well, we can't say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.
The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.
Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.
Well, I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.
Of course, I do everything for money.
When I go to the clinic next and sit with a tube in my arm and watch the poison go in, I'm in an attitude of abject passivity. It doesn't feel like fighting at all it just feels like submitting.
The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.
And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don't think anyone in my family would really feel I'd done them an injustice by saying that. We didn't see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.
There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.
High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.
