All Quiet on the Western Front quotes

View Quote Title card: This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war...

View Quote Mrs. Bäumer: There's something I want to say to you, Paul. It's just be on your guard against the women out there. They're no good.
Paul: Where we are, there aren't any women, Mother.
Mrs. Bäumer: Be very careful at the front, Paul...I'll pray for you every day and if you could get a job that's not quite so dangerous.

View Quote [to new recruits] Now you're gonna see some shell fire, and you're gonna be scared... [a shell explodes nearby and they all duck for cover; one terrified recruit soils his pants] Never mind. It's happened to better men than you. And it's happened to me. When we come back, I'll get you all some nice, clean underwear!

View Quote There used to be some food in the sawdust. Now it's all sawdust. No joke either.

View Quote [to Paul on his return] It's gonna be a real war again.

View Quote There's 80 of us left. The rest is in dressing stations or pushing up daisies.

View Quote That cannon shell you don't have to pay much attention to. Those big fellas just make a lot of noise and land about five miles behind the line. The things we've got to watch out for are them black ones. They don't give you much warning... Mother Earth — press yourselves down upon her! Bury yourselves deep into her! Just keep your eyes on me. When you see me flop, you flop, only try to beat me to it.

View Quote Sometime I'm gonna take one of you volunteers apart — find out what makes you leave school and join the army. Hey, this is no parade ground.

View Quote Replacements are all like that. Not even old enough to carry a pack. All they know how to do is die.

View Quote [of Katczinsky] If he were out, the war would be over. You remember what he always said: 'They're savin' him for the last.'

View Quote Out of 20, three are officers, nine dead, Müller and three others wounded, and one in the mad house. We'll all be dead someday so let's forget it.

View Quote I saw him die. I didn't know what it was like to die before! And then, then I came outside and it felt so good to be alive, that I started in to walk fast. I began to think of the strangest things like bein' out in the fields, things like that. You know — girls. Then it felt as if there were something electric running from the ground up through me. And I started. And I began to run hard and I passed soldiers, and I heard voices calling to me, and I ran and I ran, and I felt as if I couldn't breathe enough air into me. And now I'm hungry.

View Quote [about Paul] Here is one of the first to go, a lad who sat before me on these very benches who gave up all to serve in the first year of the war. One of the iron youth who have made Germany invincible in the field. Look at him, sturdy and bronze and clear-eyed, the kind of soldier every one of you should envy.

View Quote [Paul is on a mission with his comrades. He goes in a shell hole and to protect himself from gunfire] I say "You must [get out of this hollow], it is your comrades, it is not and idiotic command," and again: "What does it matter to me, I have only one life to lose—"

View Quote Oh God. This is Franz Kemmerich, only 19 years old. He doesn't want to die. Please don't let him die.