1
Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or their color.
New Commandments
Christopher Hitchens proposed a sharply modern alternative to the traditional Ten Commandments, shifting the emphasis away from ritual obedience and toward human dignity, liberty, anti-cruelty, and moral responsibility.
Christopher Hitchens's Modern Alternative
This 21st-century list reframes the moral conversation in secular, human-centered terms rather than divine command.
2
Do not ever even think of using people as private property, or as owned, or as slaves.
3
Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations.
4
Hide your face and weep, if you dare to harm a child.
5
Do not condemn people for their inborn nature.
6
Be aware that you too are an animal, and dependent on the web of nature. Try and think and act accordingly.
7
Don't imagine that you can escape judgement if you rob people with a false prospectus, rather than with a knife.
8
Turn off that f***ing cellphone. You can have no idea how unimportant your call is to us.
9
Denounce all Jihadists and Crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions, and terrible sexual repressions.
10
Be willing to renounce any god or any faith if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.
Christopher Hitchens, “The New Commandments,” Vanity Fair (April 2010). List wording also reflected in Vanity Fair’s official video, “Christopher Hitchens’s Ten Commandments”.
Further Discussion
Hitchens's list is vivid and memorable, and its real force lies in what it exposes: how limited the traditional commandments can seem when judged as a complete moral guide for modern life.
Its strongest lines are clear moral claims about cruelty, slavery, dignity, honesty, and violence. In that sense, the list works less as a casual parody than as a deliberate challenge to the old framework: if a timeless set of commandments leaves so much unsaid about equality, abuse, freedom, and responsibility, then perhaps it is not sufficient on its own.
Some entries are still highly topical, deliberately provocative, or shaped by the controversies of their moment. But that too reveals the difficulty of writing a new moral canon: a modern set must be vivid enough to confront real abuses, broad enough to endure, and clear enough to guide conduct across more than one generation.