Chris Hedges Quotes - Page 2

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• We have been very effectively pacified by the pernicious ideology of a consumer society that is centered on the cult of the self - an undiluted hedonism and narcissism. That has become a very effective way to divert our attention while the country is reconfigured into a kind of neofeudalism, with a rapacious oligarchic elite and an anemic government that no longer is able to intercede on behalf of citizens but cravenly serves the interests of the oligarchy itself.

  Chris Hedges

  Country, Self, Government

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• Legitimate rage on the part of working men and women is directed not only towards government but, I think quite correctly, towards liberals, who speak in a very hypocritical language about caring for their interests and yet support institutions that carry out an assault against working men and women.

  Chris Hedges

  Caring, Men, Thinking

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• If we don't hold fast to our moral principles, nobody's going to. We don't have to have a majority, but once ten, fifteen, twenty million people start voting left, we'll scare the piss out of the Democrats, and they'll have to respond. But they're not going to respond to us until that happens.

  Chris Hedges

  People, Voting, Scare

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• Human beings can be redeemed. Empires cannot. Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted. And as the Digital Age and our post-literate society implant a terrifying historical amnesia, these crimes are erased as swiftly as they are committed.

  Chris Hedges

  Historical, Age, Atrocities

  102 Copy quote

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

  Chris Hedges

  Important, Becoming, Vegetarian

  "Saving the Planet, One Meal at a Time". www.truthdig.com. November 10, 2014.

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• We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and usually venal. The question is how do we make those in power frightened of us and not be seduced by formal political processes.

  Chris Hedges

  People, Political, Forgotten

  "Thom Hartmann Talks to Chris Hedges About How Liberals Are a Useless Lot". Interview with Thom Hartmann, www.thomhartmann.com. December 07, 2009.

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• Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers -- and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.

  Chris Hedges

  Games, Class, Mirrors

  65 Copy quote

• Most of these students are so conditioned to success that they become afraid to take risks. They have been taught from a young age by zealous parents, schools, and institutional authorities what constitutes failure and success. They are socialized to obey. They obsess over grades and seek to please professors, even if what professors teach is fatuous. The point is to get ahead, and getting ahead means deference to authority. Challenging authority is never a career advancer.

  Chris Hedges

  Mean, School, Careers

  69 Copy quote

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

  Chris Hedges

  Use, Disease, Violence

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• The purpose of bread and circuses is, as Neil Postman said in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, to distract, to divert emotional energy towards the absurd and the trivial and the spectacle while you are ruthlessly stripped of power.

  Chris Hedges

  Book, Emotional, Energy

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• I'm not saying we're going to win. I am saying rebellion becomes a way to protect your own dignity. Corporations are, theologically speaking, institutions of death. They commodify everything - the natural world, human beings - that they exploit until exhaustion or collapse. They know no limits.

  Chris Hedges

  Winning, World, Corporations

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick- Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters.

  Chris Hedges

  Real, Ecosystems, Surveillance State

  76 Copy quote

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

  Chris Hedges

  Peace, Betrayal, War

  Chris Hedges (2005). “Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America”, p.96, Simon and Schuster

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• If we remain fearful, then we will be further stripped of power as we barrel towards this neofeudalistic state where there is a world of masters and serfs, a kind of permanent underclass. That's what's happening; that's what's being created. Rapacious corporate business interests have shattered all kinds of regulations and controls. They have carried out a coup d'etat in slow motion. And it's over; they've won.

  Chris Hedges

  World, Regulation, Slow Motion

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• The charade of politics is to make voters think that the personal narrative of the candidate affects the operation of the corporate state. It doesn't really matter on the fundamental issues whether the President is Republican or Democratic.

  Chris Hedges

  Thinking, Issues, President

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• The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.

  Chris Hedges

  Atheist, Perfect, Doe

  "On Secular Fundamentalism" by Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com. April 7, 2008.

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

  Chris Hedges

  War, Flags, Killing

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• The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against.

  Chris Hedges

  Reality, Long, Empowering

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• Ironically, the universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. They have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained. The elite...know only how to feed the beast until it dies. Once it is dead, they will be helpless. Don't expect them to save us. They don't know how....and when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, the power elite will be exposed as being as helpless, and as self-deluded as the rest of us

  Chris Hedges

  Jobs, War, Self

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

  Chris Hedges

  Evil, Empires, Terrorism

  27 Copy quote

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

  Chris Hedges

  Peace, War, Mankind

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• It's the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings… And because the mechanisms of governance can no longer control them, there is nothing now within the formal mechanisms of power to stop them from the creating, essentially, a corporate oligarchic state.

  Chris Hedges

  Creating, People, States

  "Journalist Chris Hedges on Capitalism's "Sacrifice Zones": Communities Destroyed for Profit". "Moyers & Company", www.truth-out.org. July 24, 2012.

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• What kind of a world are we going to leave the next generation? I, at least, want my children to look back and say, "My daddy was being arrested at the White House fence and booed off commencement stages. He was trying."

  Chris Hedges

  Children, White, Daddy

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief.

  Chris Hedges

  War, Grief, Honor

  "On War". www.nybooks.com. December 16, 2004.

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• Positive psychology is to the corporate state what eugenics was to the Nazis

  Chris Hedges

  Eugenics, Psychology, Nazi

  Chris Hedges (2014). “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle”, p.117, Nation Books

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