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"Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope-and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing-that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already.It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so."
Writing
"I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor."
Humor
"Not to dampen any parade, but if one asks if there is a single thing about Mr. Obama's Senate record, or state legislature record, or current program, that could possibly justify his claim to the presidency one gets ... what? Not much. Similarly lightweight unqualified 'white' candidates have overcome this objection, to be sure, but what kind of standard is that?"
Politics
"For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental when they can be, which translates as, on the whole, lenient, there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick."
Motivation
"The President is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the President on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm."
Leadership
"Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries."
Reflection
"The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent."
Identity
"It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends."
Culture
"It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one."
Politics
"Mass indoctrination of uneducated young men with such ideas is in itself a lethal danger to society and to international order."
Society
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"The basic element that will distinguish those that are for godliness from those that are promoting ungodliness is if such individuals possess the spirit of godliness and not just a form of it."
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Personal Development
"Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue, but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse."
Author Name
Personal Development
"No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one."
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Personal Development
"One act of a kind deed is better than thousand words of knowledge."
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Personal Development
"Evil spawns mayhem while benevolence repairs, doing good comforts the living while prayers are extended to the one who attends to the dead."
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Personal Development
"Shame on the misguided, the blinded, the distracted and the divided. Shame. You have allowed deceptive men to corrupt and desensitize your hearts and minds to unethically fuel their greed."
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Personal Development
"I can explain why I have to do what I'm about to do, but I'm acutely aware that an explanation is not a righteous justification. What's bad is bad even if necessary."
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Personal Development
"But my eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind is wearing thin."
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Personal Development
"The value system of a country comes from the pulpit."
Author Name
Personal Development
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