Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sebastian Junger
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 17
Actor
Author
Cinematographer
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Belmont
Massachusetts
People
Race
Brought
Psychiatric
Actually
York
Civilians
War
City
Hardship
Night
Months
Survived
Human
Wouldn
Instance
Admissions
Right
Went
Murder
Blitz
Every
Worst
London
Bombed
World
Almost
Rate
Declined

More quotes by Sebastian Junger

Image
War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.
Sebastian Junger
Image
How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?
Sebastian Junger
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Sebastian Junger
Image
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.
Sebastian Junger
Image
I think objectivity is like this strange myth that people think you're supposed to achieve, but actually, the dirty little secret is that it's not attainable any more than pure justice is attainable by the courts.
Sebastian Junger
Image
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
Image
A grenade launcher will easily take out a tank a Molotov cocktail placed in its air intake will destroy one as well.
Sebastian Junger
Image
Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf?
Sebastian Junger
Image
An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It is up to fate, in other words
Sebastian Junger
Image
Of the primary emotions, fear is the one that bears most directly on survival. Children show fear. Adults try not to, maybe because it's shameful, or, in some circumstances, dangerous. The fear response is automatic, though, and your body runs through its reflexes whether you want it to or not.
Sebastian Junger
Image
Firemen don't talk about whether a burning warehouse is worth saving.
Sebastian Junger
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm a good liberal, and I grew up in a very liberal family and had very strongly held beliefs.
Sebastian Junger
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
Sebastian Junger
Image
I went to Afghanistan in '96 to write about terrorist training camps south of Jalalabad and Tora Bora, in the mountains. I was there right before the Taliban took over, literally a few weeks before they took Kabul. The frontline wasn't terribly active, but it was definitely there. And they swept into power.
Sebastian Junger