All Quotes

"Gene Reynolds and I—and Burt Metcalfe, who started as associate producer and wound up eventually as executive producer of the series—we talked to countless surgeons, nurses, chopper pilots, patients, orderlies involved either in [the Korean War or the Vietnam War] …. [We] combined big, thick loose-leaf binders filled with their memories, their observations, their experiences of the … wars. And that served us in very good stead; we used an awful lot of stuff. … Gene and I, after the second season, went to Korea, visited what had been the real-life counterpart of the fictional 4077th, and spent a couple of weeks with the people there, and brought back some 22 hours of audiotape—again with those impressions that were invaluable to us.They shut down the actual MASH unit in June of 1997. I was invited to go over, my wife was invited to go over, with Larry Linville and David Ogden Stiers, and we watched them case the flag. And it was quite touching to sit on this little parade ground and hear a little Army band—it was not like the movies at all—play the unit's song, and then play "Suicide Is Painless". That was not a show business event. They were not there to celebrate the series, they were there to honor the unit that had served so long and so well; but, they couldn't help acknowledge how proud they were. It's not every Army unit that has a series dedicated to them."

"Alan Alda as Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce (seasons 1–11)"

"Loretta Swit as Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (seasons 1–11)"

"Jamie Farr as Maxwell Q. Klinger (seasons 1–11)"

"George Morgan as John Patrick Francis Mulcahy (pilot episode)"

"William Christopher as John Patrick Francis Mulcahy (seasons 1–11)"

"Wayne Rogers as John Francis Xavier "Trapper John" McIntyre (seasons 1–3)"

"McLean Stevenson as Henry Braymore Blake (seasons 1–3)"

"Larry Linville as Franklin Marion "Frank" Burns (seasons 1–5)"

"Gary Burghoff as Walter Eugene "Radar" O'Reilly (seasons 1–8)"

"Mike Farrell as B. J. Hunnicutt (replaced Trapper; seasons 4–11)"

"Harry Morgan as Sherman Tecumseh Potter (seasons 4–11)"

"David Ogden Stiers as Charles Emerson Winchester III (seasons 6–11)"

"I don't know [if M*A*S*H has made me a better actor], but I know it's made me a better human being. … I think there's a nobility about … what [the show] attempts to do, and there's a nobility about the people who are playing these parts. And the longer we've been together, the more familiar we are with one another, the deeper we've gone … into ourselves, so that when we're playing scenes with one another, it's … the two characters plus the two people who are wearing the clothes … of those characters."

"I'm feeling like I have another couple of years to become most fully and most honestly myself with this group of people, because I'm not an actual joiner; I'm essentially a private person. And now … I'm beginning to see the power and the potential in committing yourself to a group, and that it doesn't threaten your individuality, it teaches you about it."

"I do get letters from the clergy, and [I've received] some very nice comments … from spiritual leaders saying that M*A*S*H seems to have made a contribution [to changing Americans' attitudes toward war]. And I like to think that's true."

"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out."

"It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."

"Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves."

"Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch."

"Depend upon it, you see but half. You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere— and those evil-minded observers, dearest Mary, who make much of a little, are more taken in and deceived than the parties themselves."

"Everybody likes to go their own way— to choose their own time and manner of devotion."

"I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."

"I pay very little regard," said Mrs. Grant, "to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person."

"How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!"

"One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy."

"Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure."

"The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's."

"The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on; that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment of man, that though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never believe it absent."

"There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy, and her occupations were hopeful."

"We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be."

"Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else."

"Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination. Chapter 46"

"Tony Shalhoub - Adrian Monk"

"Traylor Howard - Natalie Teeger"

"Ted Levine - Captain Leland Stottlemeyer"

"Jason Gray-Stanford - Lieutenant Randall "Randy" Disher"

"Bitty Schram - Sharona Fleming"

"The heroes [in M*A*S*H] have not been—for the most part—your career Army people. Only Colonel Potter (Harry Morgan) has the career …. The others tend to attain their heroism … through an anti-military point of view. … We've tried to be fair about [our depictions of officers and of the United States Armed Forces]. … [W]hile we were depicting [the Korean War], … many of [our viewers] identified with [the show because of the Vietnam War]."

":If you're an act, then what am I?"

": She actually—"

": I don't see any difference between Huffington and the Nazis."

":When did I say that?"

":You said it in 2005, I think is correct?"

"If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?"

"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this… What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?"

"Bill O'Reilly: What religion is involved with Christmas? What religion? David Silverman: Christianity. O'Reilly: That's not a religion. That's a philosophy."

"We'll do it live... WE'LL DO IT LIVE! DO IT LIVE... look, I'll write it and we'll do it live! Fucking thing SUCKS!"

"All this is beyond me. I had trouble with Lincoln Logs. Remember Lincoln Logs? I mean, that was it for me."

"Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst possible form of government, except for all the others. Maybe we can say the same about capitalism. For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few... Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy."