Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky ["Letters," December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the "roots" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts...') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political.
2001 afghanistan debate genocide leftism morality noam-chomsky politics september-11-attacks terrorism the-nation war war-in-afghanistan-2001-presen

About This Quote

About Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was a 20th-century American and american author and journalist. Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British and American author and journalist. Known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, he gained prominence as a columnist and speaker. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Politics — Governance, civic duty, and the structures of power
  • War — Reflections on conflict, peace, and the human cost of war

More quotes by Christopher Hitchens

“What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.”
— Christopher Hitchens
happiness vindication

“Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as being "not even wrong." Most so-called spiritual discourse is of this type.”
— Christopher Hitchens
falsifiability new-ge religion science

“What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.”
— Christopher Hitchens
death friends friendship life

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is ...”
— Christopher Hitchens
afterlife atheism debate ethics

“It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and ...”
— Christopher Hitchens
children crime fear graveyards

“It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory”
— Christopher Hitchens
mortality pain
View all quotes by Christopher Hitchens →

Related Quotes

“Watching the towers fall in New York, with civilians incinerated on the planes and in the buildings, I felt something that I couldnt analyze at first and didn't fully grasp (partly because I was fa...”
— Christopher Hitchens
2001 new-york september-11-attacks terrorism

“I arrived in the USA in 2001 and by 2015 I knew through experience that I was living in a country of corporate incompetence and blatant frauds.”
— Steven Magee
2001 2015 arrived blatant

“To seek the self, one must first have a clear idea of what one is looking for. Thus, some meditation manuals advise actively cultivating the sense of self, despite the fact that this sense is the t...”
— Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Story of Buddhism: A Concise Guide to Its History Teachings
2001 anatman anatta buddhism

“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living exa...”
— Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again
afghanistan courage-to-love human-rights-day inspiration

“War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.”
— Sebastian Junger, War
afghanistan army combat life

“First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, hor...”
— Daniel Kofman, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq
afghanistan antiwar-movement axis-of-evil despotism

“If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
debate faith philosophy science

“In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest.”
— William Penn
debate inspirational justice truth

“Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.”
— Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes
debate persuasion talk violence