Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. your life?

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Boyhood Causes Childhood Christian Martyrs Christianity Comrades Conscription Death Fanaticism Friends Kamikaze Martyrdom Martyrs Masochism Memorials November Orwell Patriotism Poppies Principles Religion Sacrifice Self Abnegation Self Importance Soldiers Suicide Suicide Attack Theocracy Torture Ugliness War

Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not whol

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Boyhood Causes Childhood Christian Martyrs Christianity Comrades Conscription Death Fanaticism Friends Kamikaze Martyrdom Martyrs Masochism Memorials November Orwell Patriotism Poppies Principles Religion Sacrifice Self Abnegation Self Importance Soldiers Suicide Suicide Attack Theocracy Torture Ugliness War

I could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me? Like, for example, where? After lengthy considerations, the only place I could think of was the cockpit of a two-seater Kamikaze torpedo-plane. Of all the dumb ideas. In the first place, all the torpedo-planes were scrapped thirty years ago

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami Ideas Kamikaze Places Torpedo Planes

Are you the stuff that hero's are made of? Or are you a jellyfish in a skirt?

~ Cressida Cowell

Cressida Cowell Challenge David Tennant Fishlegs Hero Hiccup Hooligans How To Train Your Dragon Humor Kamikaze Tribe