Chef: How come all you guys sit on your helmets?
Soldier: So we don't get our balls blown off.
[Chef laughs a little, seems to think for a second and then sits on his helmet]

General Corman: Well, you see Willard... In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. Out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be god. Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The 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. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane.

Colonel Lucas: Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command.
Willard: Terminate?..... the Colonel?
General Corman: He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.
Jerry (CIA Civilian): Terminate..... with extreme prejudice.
Colonel Lucas: You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist.

Roxanne: There are two of you. One that kills and one that loves.

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?
Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.
Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard: I'm a soldier.
Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

Clean: This sho' nuff a bizarre sight in the middle-a all this shit!

Lucy (Playmate): Being playmate of the year... is the loneliest experience i can imagine. It's like... you try to express your feelings to someone and show them your heart and there's this glass wall between you, this invisible glass. They can see your mouth moving. But they can't hear what you're saying. You can never really make them hear what you're trying to say. That's why i tried so desperately... to show somebody that i had some talent. They make you do things you don't wanna do... like, this picture here. I started feeling repulsed with myself. Maybe i'm unfit to have a relationship with a beautiful, innocent boy. I wish... I wish i could find.. just one person... that could share my point of view.

Lance: Disneyland. Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland.

Roxanne (after asking if Willard will go back to America after the war and he replies no): Then you are like us; your home is here.

Hubert: You are fighting for the biggest nothing in history.

We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig. Cow after cow. Village after village. Army after army. And they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie. They lie, and we have to be merciful, for those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. I do hate them.

I've seen horrors ... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that ... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face ... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember ... I ... I ... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized ... like I was shot ... like I was shot with a diamond ... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God ... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men ... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love ... but they had the strength ... the strength ... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral ... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling ... without passion ... without judgment ... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Zack Johnson (radio announcer): And now here's another blast from the past coming out to Big Cind, all alone in the men's room out there with the First Battalion Thirty-fifth Infantry, and dedicated by the fire team at An Khe to their groupie CO Fred the Head: The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction.

Roxanne: The war will still be here tomorrow.

Kilgore: How're you feeling, Jimmy?
Door Gunner: Like a mean motherfucker, sir!