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The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

Chris Hedges

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Chris Hedges
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: September 18
Author
Journalist
War Correspondent
Writer
St. Johnsbury
Vermont
Christopher Lynn Hedges
Christopher Hedges
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Discipline
Quantifiable
Human
Magic
Disciplines
Humans
Divine
Intervention
Belief
Angels
Society
Absurd
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Atheist
Perfect
Rational
Science
Angel

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The inability to grasp the pathology* of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.
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The New York Times is an institution that attracts careerists, who are drawn to power and access. This gave me a kind of a free hand. The kind of work that I wanted to do, most of the other reporters didn't want to do. I was not doing lunch. I was not sucking up to officials. I was writing from the street.
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The violence of war is random. It does not make sense. And many of those who struggle with loss also struggle with the knowledge that the loss was futile and unnecessary.
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They [Harvard academia] liked the poor, but didn't like the smell of the poor.
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The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed.
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It wasn't a direct route. I began as a freelance reporter. That's an important distinction, because people who rise through the ranks of The New York Times become vetted, conditioned, harassed, and shaped by the institution. That never happened to me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Most of these who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war.
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Battling evil, cruelty, and injustice allows us to retain our identity, a sense of meaning, and ultimately our freedom.
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Economics dominates politics - and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.
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War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death.
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We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception.
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Our system doesn't work, and it doesn't work, ultimately, not because of Sarah Palin, or the christian right, or Glenn Beck. It doesn't work because the liberal class failed us. The liberal class failed to find the intellectual and moral fortitude to defend liberal values at a time that they were under egregious assault.
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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.
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The imperial projects will continue, Wall Street will be unimpeded in its malfeasance and criminal activity, social programs will continue to be cut, maybe not at the same speed as under a Republican Administration, but it's all headed in the same direction.
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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.
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The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.
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