Christopher Hitchens Quotes

Failed states have become breeding grounds for conflict.

Democracy for people who are not used to it can undermine stability, resulting in war.

I grew up at Kabir Choura in Varanasi in the 1970s. It was an era when communal riots used to happen every now and then at different places.

It is true that large parts of the world have not had to endure state-to-state wars for decades. The majority of the world's nations have also been spared the scourge of civil wars, although many have known violence from revolutionary insurrection.

[But if things continue the way they are] ...the society that I envision, if my dream is not just a false notion, this society will have to begin to create itself in the midst of fuss, noisiness and panic, and will have to face the prospects of both internal and external war.

I do not like violence, but ours is a violent time, and there are some men who understand nothing else.

Of course, let us have peace, we cry, "but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties ... " There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison, and death in its wake.

War inside countries is all too common.

I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.

Libya is still a mess right now.

They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak they create the seeds of turmoil and violence.

Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.

The world will be at war as long as the mind is at war with itself.

It’s impossible to say who has guns in Gaza anymore. The ballots are the only thing that can stop the violence at this point.

Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict.

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.

The disasters of the world are due to its inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously. There is always a raw and intolerant nation eager to destroy the tolerant and mellow.

There is no peace, I'm sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again.

I think the most challenging thing for me in my life and in the Bible is that we worship Jesus as the Prince of Peace. And America is constantly at war.

When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.

But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood.

Enough with the slaughters. Enough with the violence. Enough with the hatred in Iraq!

He who relies solely on warlike measures shall be exterminated; he who relies solely on peaceful measures shall perish.

I'd spent thirty years visiting the Dalai Lama, and twenty years as a journalist going to difficult places, war zones and revolutions from North Korea to Haiti and Beirut to Sri Lanka, and the question came up: What does this man have to offer to this world which seems so torn up and so attached to conflict?