Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
Christopher Hitchens Quotes
FamilyBooksIndependencePersonal Growth And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don't think anyone in my family would really feel I'd done them an injustice by saying that. We didn't see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.
American PoliticsPolitical RelevanceDecline of the Left The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.
MarxismInternationalismDeclinePolitics I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.
Lazy ArgumentsAnnoyance There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.
FriendshipCommunicationConnectionCommunityReconnection I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.
IslamReformationDanger You notice how liberals keep saying, 'If only Islam would have a Reformation' - it can't have one. It says it can't. It's extremely dangerous in that way.
CynicismHuman NatureExistence My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.
ChoiceFreedomFulfillmentRiskLifestyle All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.
VictimhoodSelf-CenterednessSolipsism Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.
IntoleranceSelf-DeceptionHypocrisy I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
TravelExperienceAdversity I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.
LivingPreparationPerseveranceOptimism I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.
Canadian IdentityCultural StereotypesSocial Norms Say 'Toronto' or 'Ontario,' and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
Gender RolesLeadershipContentment For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.
Human OriginReligious TextsSkepticism The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.
PoliticsMediaFoolishness Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.
FutureHopeJusticeLegacy I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?
PhilosophyConsciousnessBeingMetaphysics No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.
EvidenceLogicCritical Thinking What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
PrimatesDiscoveryFascinationCheerfulness Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather cheering one.
BeautyTruthChoiceExpression Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren't always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.
LovePerceptionSignificanceEnchantment Lovers often invest their first meetings with retrospective significance, as if to try to conjure the elements of the numinous out of the stubborn witness of the everyday.
PerspectiveGratitudeAwarenessTravel I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.
KindnessAcceptanceSpirituality For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.
DivinityTruthMiraclesSkepticism Even if I accepted that Jesus - like almost every other prophet on record - was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.
Women's EmpowermentSocietal DevelopmentEconomic Success If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it's a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.
MortalityHealthLifestyle ChoicesConsequence Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.
PoliticsSocialism It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.
TasteSubjectivityPerception It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.
EnduranceAdversitySufferingIllness Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.
CommunicationAdversityConnection In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.
PurposeIndividualityConviction I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.
UnityExternal ThreatCooperation Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars.
SurvivalResiliencePerseverance Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
EmpathyFamilySolidarity Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.
DefianceResilienceStrength 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.'
EvolutionLifeNatural ProcessValue Of Life I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.
ForesightPreparednessRealism I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.