Christopher Hitchens Quotes

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts.

sooner or later, if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.

Men and women with freed minds may often be mistaken, but they are seldom fooled. They may be influenced, but they cannot be intimidated. They may be perplexed, but they will never be lost.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.

The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.

Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.

Dissent is the mark of freedom, as originality is the mark of independence of mind. … No one can be a scientist … if he does not have independence of observation and of thought.

The fundamental facts about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priest had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought." The Greeks said, All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.

I don't mean to say that I'm about to state my credo here on this page, but merely to affirm, sincerely for the first time in my life, my belief in man as an individual and independent entity. Certainly not independence in the everyday sense of the word, but pertaining to a freedom and mobility of thought that few people are able - or even have the courage - to achieve.

Every mind deserves to be free.

To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.

Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.

Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.

It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.

The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought without fear.

Nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given, who does not relate the facts to the factors which have made them, who does not - in his mind - undo the facts. Abstractness is the very life of thought, the token of its authenticity.

Take away the ability of an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind to get it wrong, and you take away the whole thing.

There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.