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"Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for."
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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
"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
"It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends."
Culture
"One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no "people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either."
Integrity
"The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies."
Philosophy
"It is indeed strange, given the heavy emphasis placed by chroniclers on Churchill's sheer magnitude of personality, that the ingredient of pure ambition should be so much ignored or even disallowed."
Leadership
"My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them."
Faith
"The only people truly bound by campaign promises are the voters who believe them."
Politics
"Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence."
Mind
"In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust."
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"The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation."
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Personal Development
"The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle."
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Personal Development
"The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously."
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Personal Development
"Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for."
Author Name
Personal Development
"If the Lord is for you, which He unquestionably is, who else other than yourself would dare to stop you from proclaiming your true destiny?"
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Personal Development
"God desires that through us the ones who do not know him will be convinced."
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Personal Development
"The Petersons have not come forward in the press. Apparently they feel the media bears a large responsibility for Scott's conviction. It may be a while before we hear anything from them."
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Personal Development
"Decide on what you think is right and stick to it."
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Personal Development
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all."
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Personal Development
"The ruling classes today nourish the conviction that national hatreds and rivalries are inevitable."
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Personal Development
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