Frases de Christopher Hitchens

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“La esencia de la mente independiente no yace en lo que piensa, sino en cómo piensa.”

“La religión es una creación del ser humano. Ni siquiera los seres humanos que la crearon pueden ponerse de acuerdo acerca de lo que dijeron o hicieron en realidad sus profetas, redentores o gurús.”

“No se trata de que sean ironías de la historia, sino de que la propia historia es irónica. No es que no existan certezas, sino que existe la absoluta certeza de que no hay certezas. No solo es cierto que el único examen de conocimiento es la conciencia aguda y cultivada de lo poco que sabe uno (como bien sabía Sócrates), sino que es cierto que ilimitadas zonas y campos de lo que uno ignora se extienden de tal modo y a tal velocidad que contemplarlos resulta casi fantásticamente hermoso. Entonces, una razón por la que no volvería a vivir mi vida es que uno no puede nacer sabiendo esas cosas.”

“La madre Teresa no era amiga de los pobres; era amiga de la pobreza.”

“Diré simplemente que aquellos que ofrecen falso consuelo son falsos amigos.”

“Si me convierto será porque es preferible que muera un creyente a que lo haga un ateo.”

“Aterrorizar a los niños con la imagen del infierno, considerar a las mujeres como una creación inferior... ¿Es eso bueno para el mundo?”

“Creo que ese planeta es usado como colonia penal, manicomio y basurero por una civilización superior para deshacerse de los indeseables e incapaces. No lo puedo probar, pero usted tampoco puede demostrar lo contrario.”

“Pero en ningún sentido se pueden presentar los acontecimientos del 11 de septiembre como constituyentes de esa represalia, ni desde el punto de vista legal, ni desde el punto de vista moral. Es peor que frívolo proponer las mismas compensaciones que pueden haber estado alojadas en las mentes cerradas de los asesinos. El pueblo de Gaza vive bajo el toque de queda, la humillación y la expropiación. Eso es bien sabido. Pero ¿alguien supone que una retirada israelí en Gaza habría impedido la matanza en Manhattan? Habría que ser un cretino moral para sugerir algo así.”

“La religión monoteísta es un plagio de una habladuría sobre una habladuría de una ilusión sobre una ilusión que se remonta mucho tiempo atrás a la invención de unos cuantos fiascos.”

“El Islam no solo empezó condenando a los escépticos al fuego eterno, sino que todavía se arroga el derecho a hacerlo en casi todos sus dominios y aún predica que dichos dominios pueden y deben ensancharse mediante la guerra. Jamás, en ninguna época, ha habido un intento de poner en cuestión o siquiera investigar las afirmaciones del Islam que no haya sido recibido con la máxima dureza y rauda represión.”

“El Islam es ahora mismo el más interesante y el menos interesante de los monoteísmos del mundo. Se asienta sobre sus primitivos predecesores judío y cristiano, escogiendo un fragmento de aquí y un trozo de allá y, por tanto, si aquellos se vienen abajo, este en parte también.”

“"Lo que puede ser afirmado sin pruebas, puede ser refutado sin pruebas".”

“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.”

“For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.”

“It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”

“Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.”

“What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.”

“It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory”

“The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.”

“The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.”

“The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.”

“If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.”

“I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.”

“Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.”

“It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.”

“How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.”

“When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.”

“What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.”

“Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.”

“I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do”

“It's [Los Angeles] mostly full of nonsense and delusion and egomania. They think they'll be young and beautiful forever, even though most of them aren't even young and beautiful now.”

“Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.”

“What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.”

“The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.”

“Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.”

“The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.”

“Cheap booze is a false economy.”

“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”

“When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.”

“Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's.”

“We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.”