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The sad end he met in Afghanistan was more accurately a function of his stubborn idealism - his insistence on trying to do the right thing. In which case it wasn't a tragic flaw that brought Tillman down, but a tragic virtue.

Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Virtue
Afghanistan
Ends
Tragic
Right
Mets
Flaw
Thing
Brought
Insistence
Trying
Function
Accurately
Case
Idealism
Cases
Stubborn
Wasn
Flaws

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

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If you don't take it, I'm going to throw it away, Alex cheerfully retorted. I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.
Jon Krakauer
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When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk... may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman.
Jon Krakauer
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That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do.
Jon Krakauer
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Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.
Jon Krakauer
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When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines through you.
Jon Krakauer
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I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.
Jon Krakauer
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The thing that is most beautiful about Antarctica for me is the light. It's like no other light on Earth, because the air is so free of impurities. You get drugged by it, like when you listen to one of your favorite songs. The light there is a mood-enhancing substance.
Jon Krakauer
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I love being outdoors, being in the mountains and the desert, and my wife enjoys that too. That's one of the things that sustain our relationship.
Jon Krakauer
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I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.
Jon Krakauer
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I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.
Jon Krakauer
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Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, drives our curiosity, fuels our love and carries our friendship, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limit.... A passion for life is contagious and uplifting. Passion cuts both ways.... Those that make you feel on top of the world are equally able to turnit upside down.
Jon Krakauer
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I think I understand that religious faith which makes the holy brave and strong my strength is just somewhere else--it's in myself...I do not fear what may await me, though I'm equally confident that nothing awaits.
Jon Krakauer
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Almost every magazine piece I've ever written, I felt like I haven't done it justice, like it was just a gloss.
Jon Krakauer
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The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.
Jon Krakauer
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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
Jon Krakauer
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It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.
Jon Krakauer
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I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.
Jon Krakauer
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It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.
Jon Krakauer
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To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily.
Jon Krakauer
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Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
Jon Krakauer