Quotes By R. Lee Ermey

I got space from Travis Air Force Base, went back to the Philippine Islands and made it a point to meet the only American casting director in the Philippines. I was off and running.

I firmly believe that you live and learn, and if you don't learn from past mistakes, then you need to be drug out and shot.

I play well with everybody.

We had times in '66 and '67 when we would pick up a platoon of privates out of the receiving barracks the week before we even graduated the platoon that we were on!

I go the VA Hospital when I have a problem and the doctor jumps on me.

Without discipline, there is no Marine Corp.

America's trying to do the best for its veterans.

Every character I've ever played, I always try to take him right to the edge and not allow him to fall over, but directors have a tendency to pull me back a little bit.

I've never had to spend any time in the VA hospital, so I really can't speak for those guys.

Kubrick ate it up. He loved it. He just let me go crazy.

You'd be surprised how many kids and young people come to the website and send me email that they are actually going into the Marine Corp because of something that I said or did.

I don't have any respect at all for the scum-bags who went to Canada to avoid the draft or to avoid doing their fair share.

There have been a lot of changes in recruit training in the past twenty years.

The drill instructor must have total and complete control. Mindless obedience is what he's after.

I'm never, like I say, I'm never happy, I'm never satisfied, it's never good enough.

Even though I disagree with many of the changes, when I see the privates graduate at the end of the day, when they walk off that drill field at the end of the ceremony, they are still fine privates; outstanding, well motivated privates.

Kubrick's films have life - they just never die.

Drill instructors worked seven days a week, fifteen to seventeen hours a day in many cases, with no time off in between platoons.

I always love to come to Austin.

Communications are better now than in my Vietnam days.

I was stationed at a marine recruit depot in San Diego from 1965 to 1967.

For me, it's an honor for the military to ask me to go to Iraq, Afghanistan, or GITMO. I'm happy to go.

Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends.

I don't have to be concerned about everybody else's character.

Back in the old Corp, we weren't training those privates to infiltrate into the peacetime Marine Corp. We were training those privates to go to Vietnam.

It's my firm conviction that when Uncle Sam calls, by God we go, and we do the best that we can.

It's been a pretty fun ride, to tell you the truth.

The best part about the movie, and everybody seems to rave about it, is the boot camp part.

When you try to find funding for a VVA function, it doesn't seem like it's any trouble at all. People come out of the woodwork with their money to help out because we went over and fought a war.

I got to write most of everything I said.