Christopher Hitchens Quotes About Torture
-
If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
→ -
Urging humans to be superhumans, on pain of death and torture, is the urging of terrible self-abasement at their repeated and inevitable failure to keep the rules.
→ -
It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us - waking and sleeping - who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime, thought crime, just for what we think, who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick, as apparently we are - and then order us, on pain of eternal torture to be well again. To demand this, to wish this to be true is to wish to live as an abject slave.
→ -
Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, 'Well, good on you. See you there.'
→ -
There's no Hell mentioned in the Old Testament. The punishment of the dead is not specified there. It's only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that the idea of eternal torture for minor transgressions is introduced.
→ -
I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
→
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