By way of compensation, religion teaches people to be extremely self-centred and conceited. It assures them that god cares for them individually, and it claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in mind. This explains the supercilious expression on the faces of those who practice religion ostentatiously: pray excuse my modesty and humility but I happen to be busy on an errand for god. ibid. p74
Credulity may be a form of innocence, and even innocuous in itself, but it provides a standing invitation for the wicked and the clever to exploit their brothers and sisters and is thus one of humanity’s great vulnerabilities. ibid. p161
It is only in the reported observations of Jesus that we find any mention of hell and eternal punishment. ibid. p175
The argument that religious belief improves people, or that it helps to civilize society, is one that people tend to bring up when they have exhausted the rest of their case. ibid. p184
The worse the offender, the more devout he turns out to be. ibid. p192
Some readers of these pages will be shocked to learn of the existence of Hindu and Buddhist murderers and sadists. Perhaps they dimly imagine that contemplative easterners, devoted to vegetarian diets and meditative routines, are immune to such temptations? ibid. p199
I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. ibid. p209
However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption. Should I exercise this choice, however, I face an eternity of torture much more awful than anything endured at Calvary, or anything threatened to those who first heard the Ten Commandments. ibid. pp209-210
Many theocracies, from medieval Rome to modern Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, have managed to be spiritual police states and banana republics at the same time. ibid. p213
Sigmund Freud was quite correct to describe the religious impulse, in The Future of an Illusion, as essentially ineradicable until or unless the human species can conquer its fear of death and its tendency to wish-thinking. Neither contingency seems very probable. All that the totalitarians have demonstrated is that the religious impulse – the need to worship – can take even more monstrous forms if it is repressed. This might not necessarily be a compliment to our worshipping society. ibid. p247
The alternative to these gross phenomena is not the chimera of secular dictatorship, but the defense of secular pluralism and of the right not to believe or be compelled to believe. This defense has now become an urgent and inescapable responsibility: a matter of survival. ibid. p252
To ‘choose’ dogma and faith over doubt and experiment is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid. ibid. p278
Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. ibid. p282
Above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man, and women. ibid. p283
It’s implicitly totalitarian. Second, it degrades our human self-respect by saying we wouldn’t act morally if it were not for fear of this celestial dictatorship ... Third, it seems to me to be invariably based on sexual repression and a fear and disgust of the sexual act. Christopher Hitchens v Mark Roberts 2007
The final insult that religion delivers to us, the final poison it injects into our system, it appeals both to our meanness, our self-centredness and our solipsism and to our masochism. In order words it’s sadomasochistic. Christopher Hitchens v Alister McGrath, debate Georgetown University Washington, 2007
You don’t need religion to behave with ordinary decency and morality. And anyone who says you do, says that you need dictatorial permission to do the right thing. And then you are a serf. Christopher Hitchens v Peter Hitchens, debate 2008
Religion is poisoning our election and our democratic republic and it is time we said enough. ibid.
Religion gets its morality from us; we don’t get our morality from religion. Christopher Hitchens, lecture 6th October 2009
Religion is what you get before Philosophy. ibid.
There’s no expiation for the generations of misery and suffering that religion has inflicted in this way and continues to inflict and I still haven’t heard enough apology for it. Christopher Hitchens
Lying to the dying for a living - what self-respecting person can do that? Christopher Hitchens v Rabbi David Wolpe, debate Boston 2010
Religion: It’s a problem principally because it is manmade. Christopher Hitchens v Dinesh D’Souza: The God Debate
Religion was our first attempt to make sense of our surroundings. ibid.
Religion forces nice people to do unkind things. And also makes intelligent people say stupid things. Christopher Hitchens v Tony Blair: Is Religion a Force for Good in the World? debate 2010
Empowerment of women ... Name me one religion that stands for that or ever has. ibid.
The Mormons will tell you the same: you may think it’s a bit cracked to think that Joseph Smith found another Bible buried in upstate New York but you should see our missionaries in action. I’m not impressed. I’d rather have no Mormons and their missionaries, quite honestly, and no Joseph Smith. ibid.
We don’t need dictatorship to give us right from wrong. ibid.
A surrender of reason in favour of faith is a fantastic false multiplier, a tremendous intensifier of all things that are divisive rather than inclusive, and that’s why its history is so stained with blood. ibid.
Why doesn’t it make them happy? ibid.
Not the first time in the world that a sort of sickly Christian passivity has been preached in the face of Fascist dictatorship. ibid.
Religion is a real danger to the survival of civilisation ... It will be the death of us all. ibid.
I don’t think it’s moral at all to lie to children. When I meet people in holy orders I feel I am meeting someone who is paid to lie to children. I don’t think that’s a moral calling or occupation to tell children that they should be terrified of Hell ... This is wicked. It’s ruined the childhood of millions of children down the generations. Christopher Hitchens, Freedom from Religion Foundation 2007
I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true ... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque. Christopher Hitchens
This stuff cannot be taken away from people – it’s their favourite toy. Christopher Hitchens v Reverend Al Sharpton, debate
I spurn the gift. I don’t want what you want. I don’t want the feeling of eternal love and peace. Christopher Hitchens
The secret death wish that’s in all of it. Christopher Hitchens
Those who commit the most callous, the most cruel, the most brutal, the most indiscriminate, atrocities of all do so precisely because they believe they have divine permission. Christopher Hitchens
Everything: it attacks us in our deepest integrity … It makes intelligent people say stupid things, and it makes decent and kindly people do and say very cruel things. Christopher Hitchens
90% of Americans believe in a personal God. Sam Harris, New York Society for Ethical Culture lecture 2005
If they turned on their television sets and saw a mushroom cloud had replaced New York City, they would see a silver lining in this cloud. ibid.
They believe that we were created from mud with divine breath sometime in the last six thousand years. ibid.
There is a overarching taboo around criticising religious faith. ibid.
There is a conflict between Religion and Science. ibid.
Religious moderation ... gives cover to fundamentalism. ibid.
Where are Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? ibid.
By no stretch of the imagination can you argue that the core principle of Islam is non-violence. It is taboo to notice this. ibid.
The mainstream doctrine of Islam contains this notion of martyrdom and jihad. ibid.