Christopher Hitchens Quotes About Literature
-
It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.
→ -
The Iranian people were converted to Islam not very much longer after the conquest of the Arab world by Islam, but they refused to adopt the Arabic language, and it's a great point of pride to them that Persian culture and the Persian language and Persian literature survived the conversion to Islam. And the conversion to Islam also was for most of them not the Sunni majority form, but the Shia one. So there's a great discrepancy between Iranian society and many other of what we think of as Arab Muslim States and systems.
→ -
A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'.
→ -
When you consider how many millions of workdays begin with hangovers great and small, it is mildly surprising to find how few real descriptions of the experience our literature can boast.
→ -
I don't think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it nourishes the brain.
→ -
Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.
→ -
Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
→
Related Authors
-
Stephen Fry Comedian -
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Activist -
Peter Hitchens Journalist -
Salman Rushdie Novelist -
William Lane Craig Philosopher -
Richard Dawkins Ethologist -
Mother Teresa Saint -
George Orwell Novelist -
Sam Harris Author -
Henry A. Kissinger Former National Security Advisor -
Noam Chomsky Linguist -
John Lennox Mathematician -
Bertrand Russell Philosopher -
Martin Amis Novelist -
Daniel Dennett Philosopher -
Neil deGrasse Tyson Astrophysicist -
Dinesh D'Souza Author -
Lawrence M. Krauss Physicist -
William F. Buckley, Jr. Author -
Gore Vidal Writer