Erich Maria Remarque quotes

Erich Maria Remarque was a German novelist, best known for his anti-war classic "All Quiet on the Western Front." His works poignantly depict the trauma and disillusionment experienced by soldiers during and after World War I. He remains a powerful voice against the devastation of war and its impact on humanity. Here are 72 of his quotes:

The death of one man is death, the death of two millions is a statistic.

Erich Maria Remarque

A hospital alone shows what war is.

Erich Maria Remarque

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

Erich Maria Remarque

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.

Erich Maria Remarque

The less a man loves himself, the more he values.

Erich Maria Remarque

It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for.

Erich Maria Remarque

To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.

Erich Maria Remarque

I want to think and at the same time that's the last thing in the world I want to do.

Erich Maria Remarque

But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else.

Erich Maria Remarque

Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!

Erich Maria Remarque

Sometimes I used to think that one day i should wake up, and all that had been would be over. forgotten, sunk, drowned. Nothing was sure - not even memory.

Erich Maria Remarque

Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.

Erich Maria Remarque

Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it.

Erich Maria Remarque

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.

Erich Maria Remarque

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial-I believe we are lost.

Erich Maria Remarque

we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.

Erich Maria Remarque

Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.

Erich Maria Remarque

Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end.

Erich Maria Remarque

For a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real, profound sense, is life; and perhaps happiness even - love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge.

Erich Maria Remarque

With blinded eyes I stared at the sky, this grey, endless sky of a crazy god, who had made life and death for his amusement.

Erich Maria Remarque

I wandered through the streets thinking of all the things I might have said and might have done had I been other than I was.

Erich Maria Remarque

You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal-no one will see it. But when a button is missing-everyone sees that.

Erich Maria Remarque