Rob Erman > Rob's Quotes

“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“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'...”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

“Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith.
We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“I won, goddammit. I beat Kollberg. I beat you. I got everything I goddamn wanted: fame, wealth, power. Shit, I even got the girl."
"The problem with happy endings," Tan'elKoth said,"is that nothing is ever truly over."
"Fuck that," Hari said."I am living happily ever goddamn after. I am.”
― Matthew Stover, Blade of Tyshalle

“Okay, maybe I don't have to solve every problem with my fists...but every once in awhile, a situation arises that is substantially improved by the judicious application of force.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Heroes Die

“Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli

“Now that it’s too late, now that I lie here dying on this bloodstained sand, I finally get it.

I understand, now.

I understand. I know what he meant. My father told me that to know
the enemy is half the battle. I know you, now. That’s right.

It’s you.

All of you who sit in comfort and watch me die, who see the twitch of
my bowels through my own eyes: You are my enemy.

Corpses lie scattered around me, gleanings left in a wheat field by a careless reaper. Berne’s body cools beneath the bend of my back, and I can’t feel him anymore. The sky darkens over my head—but no, I think that’s my eyes; Pallas’ light seems to have faded.

Every drop of the blood that soaks into this sand stains my hands and the hands of the monsters that put me here.

That’s you, again.

It’s your money that supports me, and everyone like me; it’s your lust that we serve.

You could thumb your emergency cut-off, turn your eyes from the screen, walk out of the theatre, close the book . . .

But you don’t.

You are my accomplice, and my destroyer.

My nemesis.

My insatiable blood-crazed god.

Ah, ahhh, Christ . . . it hurts.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Heroes Die

“If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: 'Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.' Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation