Quote

Most of these who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war.

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
Thrust
Combat
Maintain
Perception
Soon
Impossible
War
Find
Mythic

More quotes by Chris Hedges

Image
The purpose of bread and circuses is, as Neil Postman said in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, to distract, to divert emotional energy towards the absurd and the trivial and the spectacle while you are ruthlessly stripped of power.
Chris Hedges
Image
War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death.
Chris Hedges
Image
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.
Chris Hedges
Image
Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.
Chris Hedges
Image
War is addictive. Indeed, it is the most potent narcotic unleashed by mankind.
Chris Hedges
Image
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.
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
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
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
Economics dominates politics - and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.
Chris Hedges
Image
Becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species.
Chris Hedges
Image
I don't fight fascists because I'll win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.
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
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.
Chris Hedges
Image
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
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
We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception.
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
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