If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.
Christopher HitchensAn individual deficient in the sense of humor represents more of a challenge to our idea of the human than a person of subnormal intelligence
Christopher HitchensThe Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.
Christopher HitchensEverything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.
Christopher HitchensOur weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.
Christopher Hitchens