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Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens

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Pope Pius VII declared that the United States "had done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages." (In his nostalgia for Lepanto, perhaps, His Holiness was evidently unaware that the Treaty of Tripoli, which in 1797 had attempted to formalize the dues that America would pay for access to the Mediterranean, stated in its preamble that the United States had no quarrel with the Muslim religion and was in no sense a Christian country. Of course, those secularists like myself who like to cite this treaty must concede that its conciliatory language was part of America's attempt to come to terms with Barbary demands.)
— Page: 17 #religion #institutions #
(The connection between stupidity and cruelty is a close one.)
— Page: 111 #moral-risk #
Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence. Men will laugh at almost anything, often precisely because it is—or they are—extremely stupid. Women aren't like that.
— Page: 391 #wit #
Men are overawed, not to say terrified, by the ability of women to produce babies. (Asked by a lady intellectual to summarize the differences between the sexes, another bishop responded, "Madam, I cannot conceive.")
— Page: 393 #embodiment #wit #