Christopher Hitchens Quotes

It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your beliefs.

Here’s someone who says there’s no such thing, it’s all intelligent design. How sure am I of my own views? Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you’re bound to be okay, because you’re in the safely moral majority.

I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.

I'm against ignorance. I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking. I'm against fashionable thinking. I am against the whole cliché of the moment.

A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

Don't accept that you are in crisis just because everyone says you are.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong.

It is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

I guess, just being in a group, I had never thought to question my individual artistry.

I love what I think, and I'm never tempted to believe it.

There are many people for whom 'thinking' necessarily means identifying with existing trends.

I think the appropriate kind of skepticism is this: you've got to be asking questions all the time, you've also got to make sure that you're doing so in the spirit of genuinely wanting to find the answers - and that also means being open. I battle with this: I know I tend to be very skeptical and as a result, I veer towards the dismissive. But being aware of the tendency, I like to challenge my own skepticism and make sure it's not just knee-jerk. You need to be skeptical towards yourself as well. When you're only skeptical outwards you've got an unbalanced skepticism.

Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright.

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.

The paradigm helps a person identify the thought system, which is almost always false, that is behind the rationale for the continuation of excuses. It helps them really look at excuses from an objective point of view and realize that everything they've been thinking is just as likely to be not true as it is to be true.

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

I feel guilty when people say I'm the greatest on the scene. What's good or bad doesn't matter to me; what does matter is feeling and not feeling. If only people would take more of a true view and think in terms of feelings. Your name doesn't mean a damn, it's your talents and feelings that matter. You've got to know much more than just the technicalities of notes; you've got to know what goes between the notes.

Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.