10 quotes
The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
I hate everything which is not in myself.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
And all the bright young people of his youth had butted their heads, smashed against things until they got weaker and the things still stood.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
You're a fool if you don't realize this is going to be the reactionary's century, perhaps their thousand-year reign. It's the one thing Hitler said which wasn't completely hysterical.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder… The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
He felt a crude ecstasy. He could not have given the reason, but the mountain tormented him, beckoned him, held an answer to something he wanted. It was so pure, so austere.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
You carried it alone as long as you could, and then you weren't strong enough to take it any longer. You kept fighting everything, and everything broke you down, until in the end you were just a little goddam bolt holding on and squealing when the machine went too fast.
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, "Give me the co-ordinates."… The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea…. Hot dog!
The Naked and the Dead (1948)