Christopher Hitchens Quotes

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.

Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a god.

Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the universe has been unknown to us so far. We serve as well as we can to the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community.

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

There must be a way of promoting human values without involving religion, based on common sense, experience and recent scientific findings.

The most important advance that the West has yet made is to develop a secularist moral tradition

I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

We need an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without.

We don’t need any sort of religious orientation to lead a life that is ethical, compassionate & kind.

Some people automatically associate morality and altruism with a religious vision of the world. But I believe it is a mistake to think that morality is an attribute only of religion. We can imagine two types of spirituality: one tied to religion, while the other arises spontaneously in the human heart as an expression of love for our neighbors and a desire to do them good.

Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

From my point of view, there is a tremendous amount to be said for secular humanism.

Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.

Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo.

The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.

It's a morality that keeps humans human.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. However valuable-even necessary-that may have been in enforcing good behavior on primitive peoples, their association is now counterproductive. Yet at the very moment when they should be decoupled, sanctimonious nitwits are calling for a return to morals based on superstition.

Christ could not create a codified 'Christian ethics'; such a thing would be a contradiction in terms.

Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.