“The lawbreaking itch is not always an anarchic one. In the first place, the human personality has (or ought to have) a natural resistance to coercion. We don't like to be pushed and shoved, even if it's in a direction we might choose to go. In the second place, the human personality has (or ought to have) a natural sense of the preposterous. Thus, just behind my apartment building in Washington there is an official sign saying, Drug-Free Zone. I think this comic inscription may be done because it's close to a schoolyard. And a few years back, one of our suburbs announced by a municipal ordinance that it was a "nuclear-free zone." I don't wish to break the first law, though if I did wish to do so it would take me, or any other local resident, no more than one phone call and a ten-minute wait. I did, at least for a while, pine to break the "nuclear-free" regulation, on grounds of absurdity alone, but eventually decided that it would be too much trouble.”

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About Christopher Hitchens

British and American author and journalist

Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British and American author and journalist. He was a public intellectual of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, known for his work as a columnist and speaker, and for his role among the so-called “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism. He became widely noticed for sharp, argumentative writing and for the principle often linked to him that claims without evidence need not be accepted. That idea, sometimes called Hitchens’s razor, is cited in philosophy and law, and it reflects the evidential style associated with his work.

More from Christopher Hitchens (397 quotes) →

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Books by Christopher Hitchens

God Is Not Great

2007

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Thomas Jefferson

2005

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Is Christianity good for the world?

2008

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The Missionary Position

1995

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Thomas Paine's Rights of man

2006

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