Erich Maria Remarque

"The soldiers who faced one another along the Western Front were drawn from remarkably similar societies. On both sides there were industrial workers and farm labourers. On both sides there were aristocratic senior officers and middle-class junior officers. On both sides there were Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Anyone seeking fundamental differences of national character will look in vain in the records of the trenches. There could be no better illustration of this point than four of the finest novels written about the war by former soldiers - Henri Barbusse's Under Fire, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Frederic Manning's Middle Parts of Fortune and Emilio Lussu's Sardinian Brigade - which depict the experience of service in the ranks in almost interchangeable ways."

"It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I might have been smashed to atoms, and in the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier survives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck."

"It is when one is alone that one begins to observe Nature and to love her."

"A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends."

"Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started. "Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat." "Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp. "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other—" "Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel myself offended." "Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps like you." "Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh."

"But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?"

"A hospital alone shows what war is."

"I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself to life has adapted itself even to this form. All other expressions live in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death;—it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct—it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought—it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude—it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness."

"No, we are not related. No, we are not related. Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more."

"I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me."

"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."

"Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik."

"This book is to be 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 shells, were destroyed by the war."

"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is often brought on by small men. They are so much more energetic and uncompromising than the big fellows."

"We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers — we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals."

"We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."

""Ich dachte immer, jeder Mensch sei gegen den Krieg, bis ich herausfand, dass es welche gibt, die dafür sind, besonders die, die nicht hineingehen müssen." — Im Fernseh-Interview vom 28. Januar 1963 mit Friedrich Luft beim SFB in Berlin. Erstsendung in der SFB-Sendereihe „Das Profil“ am 3. Februar 1963, 22 Uhr. Im Video der ardmediathek.de bei 09:20"

""Zynismus ist Herz mit negativem Vorzeichen." — Der schwarze Obelisk. Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1956. Seite 161"

"»Wir sterben nicht«, flüsterte sie in Ravics Armen. »Nein. Nicht wir. Nur die Zeit. Die verdammte Zeit. Sie stirbt immer. Wir leben. Wir leben immer. [...]« — Arc de Triomphe. Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1960, Seite 161. Oft zitiert als: "Wir werden leben, nur die Zeit stirbt", mit der unzutreffenden Quellenangabe Im Westen nichts Neues."

""In schwierigen Zeiten hat Gott immer eine Chance." — Arc de Triomphe. Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1960, Seite 87"

""Er fiel im Oktober 1918, an einem Tage, der so ruhig und still war an der ganzen Front, dass der Heeresbericht sich nur auf den Satz beschränkte, im Westen sei nichts Neues zu melden." — Im Westen nichts Neues. Propyläen-Verlag Berlin 1929. Kapitel XII Seite 288"

""Erst das Lazarett zeigt, was Krieg ist." — Im Westen nichts Neues. Propyläen-Verlag Berlin 1929. Kapitel X Seite 260"

"Dumm geboren zu werden ist keine Schande. Nur dumm zu sterben."

""Das Grauen läßt sich ertragen, solange man sich einfach duckt – aber es tötet, wenn man darüber nachdenkt." — Im Westen nichts Neues. Propyläen-Verlag Berlin 1929. Kapitel VII Seite 141"

""Es gibt da auch zwei Wahrheiten"

""Das Wunder, wenn man es erlebt, ist nie vollkommen. Erst die Erinnerung macht es dazu." — Die Nacht von Lissabon. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 1964, Seite 136"