Top Sebastian Junger Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Sebastian Junger Biography

Sebastian Junger

Sebastian Junger (born January 17, 1962) is an American journalist, author and filmmaker famous for the best-selling book The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea (1997), his award-winning chronicle of the war in Afghanistan in the documentary films Restrepo (2010) and Korengal (2014), and his book War (2010).

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Sebastian Junger Quotes

My reporting in Africa wouldn't be political per se, but it's certainly the point of my reporting - and of a lot of other reporters I know: Human suffering is bad, and if reporting stories about it brings it to light and someone does something, that's part of the point of journalism. And it's a thin line between that and activism, and you have to be careful about that.

Africa, Careful, Journalism, Political, Suffering

I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we'd steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life.

Bridges, Class, Rapids, Real, Thinking

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.

Gun, Jobs, Kill, People, War

The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by.

Battle, Brotherhood, Soldier, Thing

All journalists hope that their work will inspire a broader conversation. I think that's just what journalism is.

Inspire, Journalism, Thinking, Work

The most profound question is, "What would I risk dying for?" The natural answer is "for my family. " But for most of history, we didn't live in families. We lived in small communities that gave us our sense of safety and place in the world, so the natural answer would be "for my people. " The blessing and the tragedy of modern life is that we don't need our community to survive anymore. When we lose that idea, we lose a sense of who we are.

Blessing, People, Question, Safety, Tragedy

Soldiers join the military to serve their country, but when bullets are flying, it's hard to fight for an abstract notion like patriotism. They're fighting for the people standing next to them, and it doesn't matter who's a Republican or a Democrat, or who's black or white or Christian or Muslim or gay or straight. If Congress and all Americans could manage to ignore those differences, we would have a perfect country, but somehow we cannot rise to that level of nobility.

Abstract, Christian, Country, Fight, Like, Military

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.

Fun, Money, Pay, Struggle, Think, Thinking

I would never want to pass a law limiting freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean we have to condone statements that undermine basic national unity and respect. Imagine being asked to defend a country where some citizens say the man in the White House isn't their president. Or a major presidential contender accuses the commander in chief of not even being a U. S. citizen. Those kinds of statements erode trust in our democracy, and it's up to both parties to publicly reject them. We have to restore confidence that we are a nation that loves and believes in itself.

Believe, Chief, Country, Kinds, Party, Unity

I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've always turned it into a matter of honor and a way of gaining acceptance back into society if they survived.

Acceptance, Gaining, Honor, Men, Thinking, Years

People who do really dangerous tasks can't afford to sit around and discuss the merits of what they're doing.

Afford, Discuss, Merit, Merits, People, Tasks

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.

Friend, House, Old, Sells, Tree, Wife

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.

Mountain, Mountains, Power, Swept, Training, Writing

There is some evidence that average wave heights are slowly rising, and that freak waves of eighty or ninety feet are becoming more common. Wave heights off the coast of England have risen an average of 25 percent over the past couple of decades, which converts to a twenty-foot increase in the highest waves over the next half century. One cause may be the tightening of environmental laws, which has reduced the amount of oil flushed into the oceans by oil tankers.

Amount, Couple, Heights, Ocean, Past, Rising

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.

Idea, Ideas, Including, Pakistan, Understand, Way

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.

Anothers, Army, Commitment, Girlfriend, Screw

The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me.

Bad, Car, Divorce, War

Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.

Maybe, Missing, Soldier, Ultimate, War

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.

Life, Military, Multiplied, Number, Veterans Day, War

Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. . . . Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.

Asks, Borders, Careful, Country, Jobs, War

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