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In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?

Sebastian Junger

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Sebastian Junger
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 17
Actor
Author
Cinematographer
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Belmont
Massachusetts
Theory
Indulgence
Risk
Persist
Ways
Insult
Self
Reasonable
Every
Shouldn
Preciousness
Something
Despite
Persists
Way
Ultimate
Dismiss
Life
Taking
Obscene

More quotes by Sebastian Junger

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If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have.
Sebastian Junger
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Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
Sebastian Junger
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Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was provocative and complicated for Pakistan, but only if you accept the idea that he was an acceptable member of Pakistani society.
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Firemen don't talk about whether a burning warehouse is worth saving.
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Bad news is dramatic. It makes good TV. If there's a firefight on the same day that a school opens up, the media will show the firefight even though the school is way more important and will affect the community for much longer.
Sebastian Junger
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War affected my family a lot, and I was quite curious about it. I first went off to war in the early 90's as a journalist, partly out of curiosity and partly because I needed a career. War reporting has been very glamorous and exciting, and everything else that young men like.
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Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf?
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The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.
Sebastian Junger
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No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.
Sebastian Junger
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How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?
Sebastian Junger
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An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It is up to fate, in other words
Sebastian Junger
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A grenade launcher will easily take out a tank a Molotov cocktail placed in its air intake will destroy one as well.
Sebastian Junger
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My wife, Daniela, and I live in an old house from 1810 with three fireplaces at the end of a dead-end dirt road on Cape Cod, so I turn the trees into firewood for us and a friend of mine sells the rest.
Sebastian Junger
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Combat isn't where you might die -- though that does happen -- it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don't underestimate the power of that revelation. Don't underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time.
Sebastian Junger
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Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.
Sebastian Junger
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I don't think journalists in World War II were objective about the Nazis, and I don't think they should have been.
Sebastian Junger
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If hardship brought out the worst in people, the human race wouldn't have survived. Right after 9/11, for instance, the murder rate actually went down in New York City. In World War II during the Blitz, the civilians of London were bombed almost every night for six months, but psychiatric admissions declined.
Sebastian Junger
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I'm a good liberal, and I grew up in a very liberal family and had very strongly held beliefs.
Sebastian Junger
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It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important.
Sebastian Junger
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I decided to start a medical training program for freelancers, only freelancers. They're the ones who are doing most of the combat reporting. They're taking most of the risks. They're absorbing most of the casualties. And they're the most underserved and under-resourced of everyone in the entire news business.
Sebastian Junger