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War is about survival and it's about mass killing and it's about killing or being killed — that is, in the infantry — and it is extremely unpleasant.

— Paul Fussell Humanities interview (1996)

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War

More quotes by Paul Fussell

To those on both sides who suffered.

The Boys' Crusade (2003)

Irony is a great help in helping to penetrate fraudulent language.

Humanities interview (1996)

One of my favorite quotes is from Hemingway, who said, "Never persuade yourself that war, no matter how necessary, is not a crime." … It is. Sometimes it's necessary, but it's always awful, and that's my point.

Humanities interview (1996)

I was very interested in the Great War, as it was called then, because it was the initial twentieth-century shock to European culture.

Humanities interview (1996)

As a former soldier, what struck me is the absolutely heartless way that war was being pursued by the Americans, partly I think because of the race problem.

Humanities interview (1996)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

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The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now.

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Only the dead have seen the end of war.

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Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Paul Fussell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.