Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
Christopher Hitchens Quotes
PerseveranceResilienceSurvival Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
AdversityEnduranceIllnessSuffering 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.
FreedomMental ControlOppositionPowerTotalitarianism The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.
BehaviorDisbeliefDoubtEthicsMorality I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.
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.
Self-CenterednessSolipsismVictimhood Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.
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.
AppearanceCommunication StyleEvaluationJudgmentSocial Status When Caroline Kennedy managed to say 'you know' more than 200 times in an interview with the New York 'Daily News,' and on 130 occasions while talking to 'The New York Times' during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.
Health It's not at all good when your cancer is 'palpable' from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn't even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in.
Military DefensePeacePoliticsTechnology Ronald Reagan said that he sought a Star Wars defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.
AcceptanceLetting GoPrioritizationSelf-awareness I worked out early on to give up things I couldn't do well at all.
DefenseDeterminationPerseveranceWariness I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.
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.
LegacyWriting I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.
ApproachabilityConnectionCraftDialogueExpression Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.
EnchantmentLovePerceptionSignificance 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.
ContentmentGender RolesLeadership For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.
CondemnationDismissalDualityMoralityTruth George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism.
LiteratureMindSoulSpirituality Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.
Historical MemoryState CrimesWar There are people who cannot forget, as neither do I, the lesson of the years of the Indochina War. Which was, first, that the state is capable of being a murderer. A mass murderer, and a conspirator and a liar.
Ageing GracefullyAgingAppearanceSelf-AcceptanceSelf-Perception Well, I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
PerceptionProgressWar 'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.
ControversyEnd TimesFreedom of SpeechLeadershipReligion Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.
MortalityRealismSuffering I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it's a certainty you'll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it's an awful process.