The Quotes canon

Sourced and curated.

Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Now, an army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. — General George S. Patton · 1969Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. — General George S. Patton · 1969I won't have cowards in my army. — General George S. Patton · 1969I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding on to anything except the enemy. We're going to hold on to him by the nose and we're gonna kick him in the ass. We're gonna kick the hell out of him all the time and we're gonna go through him like crap through a goose! — General George S. Patton · 1969Now, there's one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now, when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you, "What did you do in the great World War II?" you won't have to say, "Well...I shoveled shit in Louisiana." — General George S. Patton · 1969For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph—a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning, that all glory is fleeting. — General George S. Patton · 1969All 7 quotes →
There is no racial bigotry here! I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops, or greasers! Here, you are all equally worthless! — Gunnery Sargent Hartman · 1987What is your major malfunction, numbnuts? Didn't mommy and daddy show you enough attention when you were a child? — Gunnery Sargent Hartman · 1987The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle. It is your killer instinct which must be harnessed if you expect to survive in combat. Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills. If your killer instincts are not clean and strong you will hesitate at the moment of truth. You will not kill. You will become dead marines and then you will be in a world of shit because marines are not allowed to die without permission. Do you maggots understand? — Gunnery Sargent Hartman · 1987Today, you people are no longer maggots. Today, you are Marines. You're part of a brotherhood. From now on until the day you die, wherever you are, every Marine is your brother. Most of you will go to Vietnam. Some of you will not come back. But always remember this, marines die. That's what we're here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever and that means you live forever. — Gunnery Sargent Hartman · 1987
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. — Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper · 1964Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? — Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper · 1964It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids, without the knowledge of the individual, certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core commie works. — Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper · 1964
Chris3 quotes
Somebody once wrote: "Hell is the impossibility of reason." That's what this place feels like. Hell. — Chris · 1986I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy...was in us. — Chris · 1986They come from the end of the line, most of 'em—small towns you never heard of: Pulaski, Tennessee; Brandon, Mississippi; Pork Bend, Utah; Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years' high school's about it. Maybe if they're lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. But most of 'em got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and our freedom. It's weird, isn't it? At the bottom of the barrel, they know it. Maybe that's why they call themselves "grunts", 'cause a grunt can take it—can take anything. — Chris · 1986
Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get out hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, depending on the breaks. — Gen. 'Buck' Turgidson · 1964Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines. — Gen. 'Buck' Turgidson · 1964
The United States is the last country in the world that Japan should fight. — General Kuribayashi · 2006I am determined to serve and give my life for my country. — General Kuribayashi · 2006
Hoot2 quotes
When I go home people'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? Why, you some kinda war junkie?" I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the man next to you, and that's it. That's all it is. — Hoot · 2001See you're thinking, don't, 'cause Sergeant, you can't control who gets hit or who doesn't or who falls out of a chopper or why. It ain't up to you. It's just war. — Hoot · 2001
You're talking about mass murder, General, not war! — President Merkin Muffley · 1964Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room! — President Merkin Muffley · 1964
I am in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive and I'm not afraid. — Private Joker · 1987The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive. — Private Joker · 1987
Private Witt2 quotes
I remember my mother when she was dyin', looked all shrunk up and gray. I asked her if she was afraid. She just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothin' beautiful or uplifting about her goin' back to God. I heard of people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it. — Private Witt · 1998Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of, all faces are the same man. — Private Witt · 1998
Some of you think you have problems because you're against the war. You demonstrated in school, you wear peace symbols on your steel, and you have attitudes. I'm an orphan, my brother's queer, the city of Chicago got the clap from my sister, Mom drinks, Dad coughs blood, I have ringworm, immersion foot, the incurable crud and the draft ruined my chances of being a brain surgeon. People, you have no problem. Except me and him. — Sgt. Adam Frantz · 1987On guard at night you'll write letters, play with your organ, and think of your girl back home. Forget her. Some hair head has her on her back right now and is telling her to fuck for peace. — Sgt. Adam Frantz · 1987
In this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain't no world but this one. — 1st Sgt. Welsh · 1998
Always do what is right...because it is right. — Baron Nishi · 2006
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. — Bill Killgore · 1979
Tea without milk is so uncivilized. — Blythe 'The Forger' · 1963
Photography is truth and cinema is truth twenty-four times a second. — Bruno Forestier · 1963
I am beyond their timid lying morality, and so I am beyond caring. — Captain Benjamin L. Willard · 1979
Any mercy and people will take advantage of you. — Captain Iwasaki · 2006
I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, so on, and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You should know that as a ranger. — Captain Miller · 1998
Civilian1 quote
Terminate...with extreme prejudice. — Civilian · 1979
Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing. — Col. Hans Landa · 2009
This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history you will see men fighting for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground, all of it, not divided by a line between slave state and free. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here is the place to build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end, you're fighting for each other. — Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain · 1993
War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man. — Corporal Upham · 1998
Crazy Earl1 quote
These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting. — Crazy Earl · 1987
Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy…the fear to attack! — Dr. Strangelove · 1964
Eversmann1 quote
Nobody asks to be a hero...it just sometimes turns out that way. — Eversmann · 2001
Have faith in your Creator, my son, death comes to us all. — Father Dupree · 1957
Firimbi1 quote
None of you Americans smoke anymore. You all live long, dull, and uninteresting lives. — Firimbi · 2001
In this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. 'Cause there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have one. Walt Kurtz has reached his and very obviously, he has gone insane. — General R. Corman · 1979
To be a good soldier you must love the army. To be a good commander you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. — General Robert E. Lee · 1993