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As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.

Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
May
Potent
Mean
Borrow
People
Vocabulary
Cruel
Religion
Inciting
Evil
Inhumane
Force
Motivating
Means
Devout

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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.
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The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are.
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Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their loves. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that care nothing for hope or longing.
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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.
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That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do.
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When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines through you.
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I was dimly aware that I might be getting in over my head. But that only added to the scheme’s appeal. That it wouldn’t be easy was the whole point.
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Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.
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Short form media is reductionist by nature.
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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.
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If you want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind.
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If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
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When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
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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.
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But perhaps the greatest attraction of Mormonism was the promise that each follower would be granted an extraordinarily intimate relationship with God. Joseph taught and encouraged his adherents to receive personal communiqués straight from the Lord. Divine revelation formed the bedrock of the religion.
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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.
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Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That's why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that's why they write symphonies.
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What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
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