"Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice." ... They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality... Not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way.

Paul Fussell

Categorized in : War Nice Piano

Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.

Paul Fussell

military winning war

All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

Paul Fussell

wise joy travel

Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travellers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns.

Paul Fussell

serious-person travel ideas

The middles cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value.

Paul Fussell

weight class facts

If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.

Paul Fussell

writing running people

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.

Paul Fussell

tvs class america

Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment.The explorer seeks theundiscovered, the traveler that which has been discovered by the mind working in history,the tourist that which has been discovered by entrepreneurship and prepared for him by the arts of mass publicity.If the explorer moves toward the risks of the formless and the unknown, the tourist moves toward the security of pure cliché. It is between these two poles that the traveler mediates.

Paul Fussell

travel art moving

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

Paul Fussell

soldier war enemy

If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.

Paul Fussell

inevitable ifs war

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.

Paul Fussell

college native-american people

Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.

Paul Fussell

very-nice nice secret

I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals.

Paul Fussell

whales baby book

Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and it's fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgment.

Paul Fussell

tourism development mind

Anyone telling about his travels must be a liar, . . . for if a traveler doesn't visit his narrative with the spirit and techniques of fiction, no one will want to hear it.

Paul Fussell

technique liars fiction

Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.

Paul Fussell

lucky government humility

I find nothing more depressing than optimism.

Paul Fussell

optimistic depressing depression

The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.

Paul Fussell

sitting wonder war

To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason.

Paul Fussell

reason home war

What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism; all else is publicity.

Paul Fussell

publicity journalism want

The wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

Paul Fussell

wise trying travel