Philip Caputo famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

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

#War #Mean #Marine
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 #Loss
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
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 #Way
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
Itâ€™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 hunterâ€™s craft is killing, not hunting.
-- Philip Caputo

#Journey #Hunting #Crafts
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
In wartime, the degree of patriotism is directly proportional to distance from the front.
-- Philip Caputo

#Distance #War #Degrees
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
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
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
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
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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