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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
Force
Motivating
Means
Devout
May
Potent
Mean
Borrow
People
Vocabulary
Cruel
Religion
Inciting
Evil
Inhumane

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

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At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts.
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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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What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
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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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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.
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The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light.
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I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.
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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.
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Short form media is reductionist by nature.
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...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
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If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
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That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do.
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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.
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Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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But somethings in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.
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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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When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines through you.
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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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It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty.
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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.
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