The cause doesn't have to be righteous and battle doesn't have to be winnable; but over and over again throughout history, men have chosen to die in battle with their friends rather than to flee on their own and survive.
Sebastian JungerRead
The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love is shown through deep commitment and the willingness to sacrifice for one another.
Sebastian Junger's quote emphasizes the profound bond formed between individuals in high-stakes situations, particularly within the military context. It suggests that true love involves a shared commitment to protect each other, and this commitment is not only unyielding but deepens over time through experiences that challenge and reshape one's character. The willingness to sacrifice oneself for another, which transcends ordinary relationships, reflects a level of love that surpasses even spiritual teachings, leading to a transformative personal experience.
Themes
CommitmentSacrificeLoveRelationshipMilitaryTransformation
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a veteran's event to emphasize the bond formed in combat.
More from Sebastian Junger
All quotes →When you're scared, you're still hanging on to life. When you're ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you've never done it before.
Sebastian JungerRead
Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
Sebastian JungerRead
It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important.
Sebastian JungerRead
In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?
Sebastian JungerRead
I decided to start a medical training program for freelancers, only freelancers. They're the ones who are doing most of the combat reporting. They're taking most of the risks. They're absorbing most of the casualties. And they're the most underserved and under-resourced of everyone in the entire news business.
Sebastian JungerRead
Similar quotes
It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening, because they're not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that's a shorthand for all the feelings that they're not ready to deal with yet.
Stephen KingRead
This is the case with millions of people. They talk about love, they know all the poetries about love, but they have never loved. Or even if they thought they were in love, they were never in love. That too was a 'heady' thing, it was not of the heart. People live and go on missing life. It needs courage. It needs courage to be realistic, it needs courage to move with life wherever it leads, because the paths are uncharted, there exists no map. One has to go into the unknown.
RajneeshRead
Everyone has to die. I'm not particularly scared about it. What really frightens me is that if I go before my wife, I will leave her alone, and vice versa. The ideal would be to die together.
Ennio MorriconeRead
You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your 'love map,' an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up. And I also think that you gravitate to certain people, actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.
Helen FisherRead
To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.
William Makepeace ThackerayRead