A Quote by Christopher Hitchens

It's amazing how relaxing it is not to claim you know more than you do. I'm surprised that those who claim to speak in the name of god don't take more advantage of this relief.

Christopher Hitchens

Quote Topics

Advantage Amazing Claim God How Know More Name Relaxing Relief Speak Surprised Take Than Those

Quote Author

Christopher Hitchens
American - Author
April 13, 1949 - December 15, 2011

If you're writing a book where you want to make a positive truth claim, then you should absolutely call it nonfiction or memoir. If you don't want to make that claim - if that's not what's important to you; if you're more interested in storytelling and interiority and interpersonal relationships than in objective, checkable facts about the world - then why wouldn't you call it a novel, and take advantage of what that gets you, of the extra freedom, of belonging to the tradition of the novel?

Elif Batuman

Atheism is the lack of belief in a god (or gods). It makes no claim. It merely rejects the claim that a god (or gods) exists. Nothing more.

Ricky Gervais

The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.

Sam Harris

It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions is right.

Timothy Keller

I see myself as a spiritual person, but I don't think anyone should claim proof of a god. No one can prove it. That's why I don't claim to know whether there are one, many or no gods.

King Diamond

How can you claim infallibility and claim that in these 114 [drone] strikes there was just one mistake -- one person killed that was a civilian -- and at the same time say, 'Well, we don't really know how many people were killed or who they were, but we know they weren't civilians'? I don't know how you can do that.

Richard Engel

The Christian claim is: Nothing explains the facts better than an all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent god creating the universe and sending Jesus to spread his message. This is about as remarkable a claim as could be stated, and yet it is tossed out lightly. Christians seem to imagine that "God did it" is as plausible as the natural explanation that stories grow with the retelling. The Christian has the burden of proof, and it's an enormous burden given this enormous claim.

C. S. Lewis

The notion that the levels of radiation would be damaging to human life is preposterous. It's simply not true. It is a political claim more than it is a scientific claim. THAAD has been a thoroughly tested system, and it has been extremely effective.

Trent Franks

The perpetual enemy of faith in the true God is not atheism (the claim that there is no God), but rather Gnosticism (the claim that God is known).

Martin Buber

None despise fame more heartily than those who have no possible claim to it.

Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

The claim that everybody sees the world differently is not a claim that there's no reality. It's a different kind of claim.

Errol Morris

I'm in bed, so to speak, more with those people who consider themselves atheists but who are concerned about the same things, ideas, and politics I'm concerned with than those who claim to be religious in the same way that I am but have no interest in the political reorganization of society, which needs to be talked about from the pulpit.

Michael Eric Dyson

The prime minister has chosen to acknowledge publicly the sovereignty of God and the claim of God on her life. Hers is the challenge to live up to that claim.

Philip Robinson

I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works. That's what I claim. And if they did, they'd be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this Supreme Being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly.