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Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.

Paul Fussell

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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
Requires
Present
Understanding
History
Past
Pretending

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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.
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Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.
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Tourism requires that you see conventional things, and that you see them in a conventional way.
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The wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.
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To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason.
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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.
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If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.
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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.
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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.
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And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach.
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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.
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If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.
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Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience.
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The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience.
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Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon.
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What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism all else is publicity.
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A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.
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Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way.
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The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.
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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