Quote

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief.

Chris Hedges

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Chris Hedges
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: September 18
Author
Journalist
War Correspondent
Writer
St. Johnsbury
Vermont
Christopher Lynn Hedges
Christopher Hedges
Empty
Chests
Glory
Wounded
Profiteering
Honor
Patriotism
Jingoism
Words
Mask
Vanquished
Use
Abstract
Pounding
War
Killing
Senseless
Grief
Cries
Cry
Chest

More quotes by Chris Hedges

Image
I used to wonder: Is Huxley right or is Orwell right? It turns out they're both right. First you get the new world state and endless diversions as you are disempowered. And then, as we are watching, credit dries up, and the cheap manufactured goods of the consumer society are no longer cheap. Then you get the iron fist of Oceania, of Orwell's 1984.
Chris Hedges
Image
Battling evil, cruelty, and injustice allows us to retain our identity, a sense of meaning, and ultimately our freedom.
Chris Hedges
Image
The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Chris Hedges
Image
Again, although I'm not a particularly religious person, I go back to the religious left that I come out of: There are moral imperatives to fight back. As Daniel Berrigan says, We're called to do the good. And then we have to let it go. It's not our job to know where the good goes.
Chris Hedges
Image
In war, we always deform ourselves, our essence.
Chris Hedges
Image
We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and usually venal. The question is how do we make those in power frightened of us and not be seduced by formal political processes.
Chris Hedges
Image
We've become the most eavesdropped, monitored, spied on, photographed population in human history, dwarfing anything that was done by the Stasi state and East Germany. And that's all been - you know, these are all the sacrifices that we supposedly have to make to make ourselves safe.
Chris Hedges
Image
I'm not saying we're going to win. I am saying rebellion becomes a way to protect your own dignity. Corporations are, theologically speaking, institutions of death. They commodify everything - the natural world, human beings - that they exploit until exhaustion or collapse. They know no limits.
Chris Hedges
Image
Legitimate rage on the part of working men and women is directed not only towards government but, I think quite correctly, towards liberals, who speak in a very hypocritical language about caring for their interests and yet support institutions that carry out an assault against working men and women.
Chris Hedges
Image
It is one of the great ironies of corporate control that the corporate state needs the abilities of intellectuals to maintain power, yet outside of this role it refuses to permit intellectuals to think or function independently.
Chris Hedges
Image
I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
Chris Hedges
Image
Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jail and prisons, however, they can each generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year.
Chris Hedges
Image
No real journalist makes $5 million a year... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.
Chris Hedges
Image
Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.
Chris Hedges
Image
Patriotism, often a thinly veiled form of collective self-worship, celebrates our goodness, our ideals, our mercy and bemoans the perfidiousness of those who hate us.
Chris Hedges
Image
Positive psychology is to the corporate state what eugenics was to the Nazis
Chris Hedges
Image
The arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor.
Chris Hedges
Image
They [Harvard academia] liked the poor, but didn't like the smell of the poor.
Chris Hedges
Image
Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.
Chris Hedges
Image
The notion that the press was used in the [first Iraq] war is incorrect. The press wanted to be used. It saw itself as part of the war effort.
Chris Hedges