"VERHOEVEN: It was too difficult; I think they’ve never seen a movie, a really big Star Wars kind of movie with this message. I don’t think they were ready to accept the fact that the film was political. You can see that it was political 15-20 years later, with all that’s happened. People have started to realize that a dominant layer of the movie was political. I thought it was very audacious what we did, but it didn’t pay off very well."

"VERHOEVEN: We were paraphrasing elements of Riefenstahl movies. Everybody seemed to be sculptures—I wanted these people to be like proto-Nazis, proto-Aryans. Their faces are kind of sculptures. So I thought to choose actors who would have streamlined faces, and certainly Johnny Rico has that. I think that was a necessity to make it believable to myself, the exaggeration. There’s no question, the bugs are fantasy and comic book-y! So if you use those kinds of elements, then you should be careful not to make your caricature around them completely real because they clash! If you have a caricature enemy you can’t have a very realistic protagonist. I think it was necessary to make them two comic book figures, that was the idea."

"VERHOEVEN: We were making some statements underneath the movie. The peripheral layer is interwoven with the main narrative. It’s very much visible in the newsreels, which are all based on German fascism. I felt that this was talking about upcoming fascism, of course. Even the Germans, I would say 80 to 90 percent of the Germans, when all this happened, didn’t think that it was happening. You see all the newsreels from the streets of Berlin—they’re all of very happy looking guys or girls. They were not aware of the threats, the diabolical deaths underlining the politics of the government. At that point I did not feel, in all honesty, that this was really something of a possibility in the United States. Otherwise we would’ve been prophets."

"If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn't work, no one will listen to me. So I'm going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it's only good for killing fucking bugs!"

"The layers that were there—especially with the most political movie, "Starship Troopers." It's never that we thought, We're going to do a representation of the United States as a metaphor. On the other hand, many elements of the movie came from American life ... it was all based on things that were vaguely there in American life. Especially in Texas and stuff like that ... but we never set out to do that. We needed something to put our point of view also there, you know? We don't think this is so great in anyway, this kind of, "let's go to war, let's kill.""

"In The New York Times, Janet Maslin complained that the film was nothing more than “crazed, lurid spectacle.” Roger Ebert described it as “totalitarian.” Reading those initial reviews, it seems as though Starship Troopers fell victim to Poe’s Law, the inevitability that at a certain point it becomes impossible to distinguish between an extreme example of a thing and a parody of that thing. Was Starship Troopers fascist propaganda or a parody of fascist propaganda? History has been somewhat kinder to Starship Troopers, as demonstrated by a slew of retrospective pieces that enthusiastically recognized it as “one of the most misunderstood movies ever” and a piece of social commentary that was “way ahead of its time.”"

"Heinlein’s book has been seen to suggest that “the best societies would be run by military dictatorships.” However, Verhoeven described Starship Troopers as “a movie about fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism.”"

"It’s hard not to draw a parallel with America’s 17-years-and-counting of engagement in the Middle East. What comes after the war? More war. This is a surprisingly radical message for a big budget ($100 million) studio film. “I don’t think that will be done again, a movie like that,” Verhoeven admits over the phone. “It’s so surprising that this was made. I don’t think anyone nowadays would dare to make a movie like that.”"

"When Starship Troopers was released, critics panned it as a simplistic B-movie. Former film critic Janet Maslin called it “raunchiness tailor-made for teen-age boys” in the New York Times. It’s not a totally unfair description of a movie in which most scenes involve characters being sprayed with lime-green alien guts."

"Like his RoboCop, Verhoeven uses television clips and fake advertisements to take shots at society. But where RoboCop uses these moments to skewer Cold War politics and the American automotive industry, the ones in Troopers are more pointed. They are satirical extremes of military propaganda, showing happy citizens (not civilians), shots of children joyfully holding guns, all while pushing for enrollment into Federal Service. The ads dovetail into the depiction of a Nazi-like regime that is embraced and is working. The allusion to Nazism is so prevalent and over the top - from costuming to the use of a Nazi Eagle like symbol - that it clearly is satire to show the dangers of extremist policies, which somehow blew right past the critics of the day. Militarism is another victim of Verhoeven's critical eye. There is no plan for the Federation forces. They are told to go in and kill anything with more than two legs, and when that invariably goes sideways they simply bring in more soldiers. The graphic scenes of the dead are an unwavering display of the horrors of war, a visual representation of the dangers of unchecked policy. The real kicker comes at the end. Whereas other films would have the main characters learn about the dark side of their leadership, even opting to fight against it, Starship Troopers' protagonists instead become part of the system, a vicious circle where they are now the stars in the propaganda."

"These days Starship Troopers sits easily alongside Verhoeven’s other sci-fi cult classics, Robocop and Total Recall, in a fabulous pantheon of futuristic, satirical silliness. Yes, these movies are violent, bloody, over-the-top and often hammily acted, but the director is very much in on the joke. Only an outsider like Verhoeven could have made films that overtly criticised the knuckleheaded excesses of 1980s and 90s American action cinema, yet somehow did a better job of delivering the era’s trademark trashy bombast than Hollywood itself."

"“It’s a very rightwing book,” the director told Empire magazine. “And with the movie, we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be ‘Eat your cake and have it.’ All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, ‘Are these people crazy?’"

"When Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers originally hit cinemas in 1997, the reviews were scathing. The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan argued that the Dutch director of Robocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct had delivered a space flick “rigorously one-dimensional and free from even the pretense of intelligence”, even suggesting that the film-maker had preserved the “fascist utopianism” of the 1959 Robert A Heinlein novel that it had been based on. “Troopers takes us to a militaristic future where video bulletins encourage young people to ‘Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world’,” wrote Turan. “Schools teach that ‘violence is the supreme authority’ and nothing solves problems with the efficacy of ‘naked force.’” The Washington Post described Verhoeven’s tone as “so inconsistent that it’s impossible to decide whether he’s sending up the Third Reich or in love with it”."

"Sky Marshall Diennes: [addressing the UCF Federal Council as it agrees to declare war against the Bugs] We must meet this threat with our valor, our blood, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy now and always!"

"Dizzy Flores: [placating Rico after he fights Xander Barcalow over Carmen] Mobile Infantry and Fleet don't mix."

"[to Rico and Carmen after the Brain Bug is finally captured] We've got one of their Brains now. Pretty soon we'll know how they think. One day it will all be over. And everyone will forget that this was the moment. This was when it turned. It wasn't the mighty fleet, it wasn't some fancy new weapon. [they see the now-Private Zim being carried by the soldiers] It was a drill instructor named Zim, who captured a Brain."

"Hold here! Hold what you got!"

"Listen up! I expect the best and I give the best. [opens pod and pulls out a beer keg] Here's the beer. [everybody cheers. opens another pod with sports gear and music equipment] Here's the entertainment. [throws football] Have fun. That's an order."

"[to Rico at a party] Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom."

"Ann-Margret - Ariel Truax"

"Burgess Meredith - John Gustafson, Sr."

"Daryl Hannah - Melanie Gustafson"

"Buck Henry - Snyder"

"Ossie Davis - Chuck"

"Kevin Pollak - Jacob Goldman"

"Walter Matthau - Max Goldman"

"Jack Lemmon - John Gustafson"

"Kids. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em."

"[distraught over losing his Green Hornet fishing rod in the fishing hole] Where's the Green Hornet?"

"I don't mean to brag... but I'm the greatest!"

"Junior: We goin' Sizzla! We goin' Sizzla!"

"Gloria: See. if I'm thirsty. I don't want a glass of water, I want you to sympathize. I want you to say, "Gloria, I too know what it feels like to be thirsty. I too have had a dry mouth." I want you to connect with me through sharing and understanding the concept of dry mouthedness."

"It is hard God damn work, making something this pretty look like a chump!"

"I'm in a fuckin' zone!"

"Who you callin' a pilgrim motherfucker? Gobble this turkey!"

"Keep singin' guys... My old man was a preacher... I love this shit!"

"You're too pretty to play basketball, you know that? You got that Z in your 'fro! Hey man, what are you, the Black Zorro?"

"Yo, pretty boy! I looked up basketball player in the dictionary and it said 'Not you!'."

"A white man wants to win first, look good second. A black man wants to look good first, win second."

"You still putting up bricks? What is this a masons convention? Clang!! Clang!! I need welding torch to play in this leauge. Lets stop right now and gather up all these bricks and build a shelter for the homeless so that your mother will have a place to live. I want your Mother and Sister out of my house immediately !!"

"It's hard work makin' you look so bad."

"Zeke: No, no, no, no...Billy Boy, this is Ghana. You, my friend, are shooting for The Sudan."

"Billy, listen to me. White men can't jump."

"Can anybody step in for mr. handicap? Anybody, for Mr. Motherfucking March of Dimes?"

"Oh man shut your anorexic malnutrition tapeworm-having overdose on Dick Gregory Bahamian diet-drinking ass up. Leave me alone!"

"You can put a cat in an oven, but that don't make it a biscuit."

"You see Billy it's like this, you either smoke or you get smoked. And you got smoked."

"Kevin Benton - Zeke."

"David Roberson - T.J."

"Marques Johnson - Raymond"