Chris Hedges Quotes

One needs solitude and quiet to think. The cacophony of modern culture is designed to make that impossible.

Becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species.

The press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth.

Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.

The true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.

A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.

Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.

I don't fight fascists because I'll win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.

We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception.

The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism

War in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics.

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

No real journalist makes $5 million a year... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.

The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment.

War is addictive. Indeed, it is the most potent narcotic unleashed by mankind.

War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death.

Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.

There are no impediments now to corporations. None. And what they want is for us to give up. They want us to become passive. They want us to become tacitly complicit in our own destruction.

The inability to grasp the pathology* of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.

The arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor.

The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal.

Jesus was a pacifist.

There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

The notion that the press was used in the [first Iraq] war is incorrect. The press wanted to be used. It saw itself as part of the war effort.

Economics dominates politics - and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.

They [Harvard academia] liked the poor, but didn't like the smell of the poor.

Battling evil, cruelty, and injustice allows us to retain our identity, a sense of meaning, and ultimately our freedom.

I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

Patriotism, often a thinly veiled form of collective self-worship, celebrates our goodness, our ideals, our mercy and bemoans the perfidiousness of those who hate us.

The violence of war is random. It does not make sense. And many of those who struggle with loss also struggle with the knowledge that the loss was futile and unnecessary.

Many of us, restless and unfulfilled, see no supreme worth in our lives. We want more out of life. And war, at least, gives a sense that we can rise above our smallness and divisiveness.

The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to them—violence.

In war, we always deform ourselves, our essence.

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence-death-is hidden from public view.

Most of these who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war.

Money has replaced the vote.

The war began with words, but none of us paid any attention.'- Seka Milanovik

We are enjoined to love our neighbor, not our tribe.