Quote

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.

Paul Fussell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Fussell
Age: 88 †
Born: 1924
Born: March 22
Died: 2012
Died: May 23
Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Military Historian
University Teacher
Writer
Pasadena
California
Situation
War
Disproportionate
Means
Presumed
Ends
Constitutes
Mean
Ironic
Every
Irony
Expected
Worse

More quotes by Paul Fussell

Image
If the term discussion has always seemed to me to imply mild warnings of wasted time, workshop sets off a clangorous alarm.
Paul Fussell
Image
The simple is carefully shunned by those who labour to seem what they would be.
Paul Fussell
Image
Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.
Paul Fussell
Image
And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach.
Paul Fussell
Image
Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon.
Paul Fussell
Image
Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment.
Paul Fussell
Image
Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.
Paul Fussell
Image
Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and it's fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgment.
Paul Fussell
Image
To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason.
Paul Fussell
Image
The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.
Paul Fussell
Image
The balls used in top class games are generally smaller than those used in others.
Paul Fussell
Image
All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.
Paul Fussell
Image
The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience.
Paul Fussell
Image
If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.
Paul Fussell
Image
Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.
Paul Fussell
Image
Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience.
Paul Fussell
Image
Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travellers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns.
Paul Fussell
Image
A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.
Paul Fussell
Image
Most people who seek attention and regard by announcing that they're writing a novel are actually so devoid of narrative talent that they can't hold the attention of a dinner table for thirty seconds, even with a dirty joke.
Paul Fussell
Image
If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.
Paul Fussell