The Electron Pencil

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TODAY’S QUOTE

… Is actually a dozen-plus quotes.

And it (they) will be the sum total of today’s post.

Christopher Hitchens, essayist, opinionist, keyboardist, liberal, conservative, atheist, believer in humanity, semiotic Molotov cocktail thrower, and argumentist par excellence, died yesterday.

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Nothing I pound out on these keys can compare with his writings.

Bodies die; words live.

Here are some of Hitchens’ words:

• “Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.”
• “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.”
• “What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.”
• “What can be asserted without proof can be dissmissed without proof.”
• “Jesus is Santa Claus for adults.”
• “I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”
• “In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.”
• “There is, especially in the American media, a deep belief that insincerity is better than no sincerity at all.”
• “In effect, nobody who is not from the losing classes has ever been thrust into a death cell in these United States.”
• “I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator – that’s beyond my conceit.”
• “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.”
• “The enduring rapture with magic and fable has always struck me as latently childish and somehow sexless (and thus also related to childlessness).”
• “I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.”

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