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Philip Caputo Quotes

War, the ordinary man's most convenient means of escaping from the ordinary.

War, the ordinary man's most convenient means of escaping from the ordinary.

Philip Caputo
War, Mean, Marine
Philip Caputo (2014). “A Rumor of War”, p.6, Macmillan

In a guerrilla war, the line between legitimate and illegitimate killing is blurred. The policies of free-fire zones, in which a soldier is permitted to shoot at any human target, armed or unarmed, further confuse the fighting man's moral senses.

Philip Caputo
War, Fighting, Men
Philip Caputo (2014). “A Rumor of War”, p.327, Macmillan

You're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.

Philip Caputo
Boys, Average, Years
Philip Caputo (1977). “A rumor of war”, Henry Holt & Co

Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you, its first order of business is to preserve itself, and the way it preserves itself is to keep you from having any doubts, and the way it keeps you from doubting is to blind you to the way things really are. Evidence contrary to the belief can be staring you straight in the face, and you won't see it... True believers just don't see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn't be true believers anymore.

Philip Caputo
Order, Doubt, Viruses
Philip Caputo (2005). “Acts of Faith”, p.146, Vintage

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.

Philip Caputo
Peace, War, Fighting

In wartime, the degree of patriotism is directly proportional to distance from the front.

Philip Caputo
Peace, War, Distance

The unraveling that I experienced much earlier in the Vietnam war than many people think, was due to the immediate foxhole experiences. But once I got back home and began to follow the war on TV and in the press I began to see this enormous con game - I can't think of any other word for it - that government and the military was foisting on the American people, especially on the young men of my generation, and even worse, the young men of my generation who weren't particularly economically or intellectually privileged.

Philip Caputo
Military, War, Home
Source: classic.esquire.com

Being a correspondent at the Vietnam war for me was about exposing myself to danger but it wasn't completely self-serving. I felt that there were these dark places of the earth, were dark things were happening and people should know about them. Call it my moral obligation to go and see them and report them.

Philip Caputo
War, Dark, People
Source: classic.esquire.com

There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.

Philip Caputo
Attitude, Military, War

True believers just don't see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn't be true believers anymore.

Philip Caputo
Way, Being True, Believer
Philip Caputo (2005). “Acts of Faith”, p.146, Vintage

I'm a Midwesterner by birth, and when I traveled there, when I was young, most of the small towns were thriving, vibrant places.

Philip Caputo
Towns, Birth, Small Town

It’s paradoxical that the death of your quarry is besides the point and at the same time the whole point. A chase without a kill as its object is like a journey without a destination; a kill without a chase employing all the hunter’s craft is killing, not hunting.

Philip Caputo
Journey, Hunting, Hunters

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