Quotes from Dave Grossman

those who experienced the "Thank God it wasn't me" response. Having this thought race through your mind upon seeing violent death is arguably one of the deepest, darkest, most shameful of all human responses. However, when you tell people that it is a normal thought, it is as if a huge weight has been lifted, and their sense of shame no longer has power to hurt them.

Per capita aggravated assaults in the U.S. increased almost sevenfold between 1957 and 1993.

The murder rate is being held down by medical technology

the rate at which we are trying to kill or seriously injure each other, might be at the highest levels in peacetime history.

when soldiers were left to their own devices, the vast majority of them, on all sides, could not kill.

The sense of personal effectiveness and self confidence created by realistic training is as much a stress reducer as when the muscles go on autopilot.

What battles have in common is the human: the behavior of men struggling to reconcile their instinct of self-preservation, their sense of honor and the achievement of some aim over which other men are ready to kill them. The study of battle is therefore always a study of fear and usually of courage, usually also of faith and sometimes vision. —Sir Herbert Butterfield Man On His Past