Hitch

If I commented too much on this video clip, I would degrade the immense intellectual quality apparent in it. I challenge anyone to speak just one sentence, without forethought, in such a grammatically correct manner as does Mr. Hitchens. If I had half the intellect in my own field as this man has, I would be the greatest scientist in my institution, and perhaps in my country.

Christopher Hitchens speaks at the recent Freethought Convention in Texas:

In this, there is perhaps one of his greatest quotes to date:

"There are no final solutions. There is no absolute truth. There is no supreme leader. There is no totalitarian solution that says that if you will just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you will just give up, if you will simply abandon your critical faculties, a world of idiotic bliss can be yours. You will certainly lose the faculties, and you may not know, as a result, that the idiotic bliss is even more idiotic than it looks. But, we have to begin by repudiating all such claims. Grand Rabbis, Chief Ayatollahs, Infallible Popes, the peddlers of surrogate and mutant quasi-political religion and worship. The Dear Leader, the Great Leader, we have no need of any of this. And looking at them and their record and the pathos of their supporters, I realize that it is they who are the grand impostors, and my own imposture this evening was mulled by comparison."

- Christopher Hitchens