Hitchens Is Dead: Long Live Christopher Hitchens

God Is Not Great, wrote Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), and in doing so, along with his many other writings, political positions, and provocations throughout his life, showed himself to be a fearless contemporary philosophe,  journalist and inveterate hard partier. Mr. Hitchens swung from the Left as a writer for the Nation magazine to being an ardent supporter of the War in Iraq as well as his staunch support for the architects of that war in the Bush White House. He was a detractor of  religion and religious belief, organized religion, and Mother Theresa, for that matter.  Mr. Hitchens boldly charged forward then as he did after his dire prognosis, refusing to change his views or his rejection of the idea of a Supreme Being, particularly one as Gatekeeper of the Afterlife, as well as "Islamofascism" a temr that he denied creating but helped to popularize.

 In an interview Mr. Hitchens said: 'Do I think our civilisation is superior? Yes, I do. Do I think it's worth fighting for? Most certainly.'

"The search for nirvana, like the search for utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle." – Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, 2004


"[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction." – Slate, October 2003


"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more." – The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer, 2007


"Where would you like to live? In a state of conflict or a conflicted state?" – Hitch-22


Other quotes here


 Full NY Times article here

The Guardian obit here

Hitchens: From 9/11 to the Arab Spring (September 2011) article here

As Physicist and Fellow Atheist Richard Dawkins observed in tribute, Mr. Hitchens was a "valiant fighter against all tyrants including God."

--Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn