Chris Hedges: Trending quotes

“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.”

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

“War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians.”

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

“if we don’t rebel, if we’re not physically in an active rebellion, then it’s spiritual death.”

“It is one of the great ironies of corporate control that the corporate state needs the abilities of intellectuals to maintain power, yet outside of this role it refuses to permit intellectuals to think or function independently.”

“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 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.”

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

“The relationship between those who are constantly watched and tracked and those who watch and track them is the relationship between masters and slaves.”

“Why hasn’t America risen up in protest? Because American democracy was dysfunctional even before Trump ran for president. The moneyed interests had already taken over much of it. It’s hard for people to get very excited about returning to the widening inequalities and growing corruption of the decades before Trump. Which partly explains why Biden is foundering.”

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

“Jesus was a pacifist.”

“I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.”

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

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

“There are no internal or external checks on the deep state. The democratic institutions, including the press, that once gave citizens a voice and a say in the exercise of power have been neutered. The deep state will further the corporate consolidation of wealth and power, expand the social inequality that has thrust half of Americans into poverty or near poverty, strip us of our remaining civil liberties and feed the rapacious appetites of the military and the war industry.”

“The United States … celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.”

“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.”