Top 160 Max Brooks Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Sometimes you find your path, sometimes it finds you.”

— Max Brooks

2. “Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.”

— Max Brooks

3. “Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.”

— Max Brooks

4. “Generation Z, they cleaned up their own mess.”

— Max Brooks

5. “The highest distinction is service to others.”

— Max Brooks

6. “Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they’re used.”

— Max Brooks

7. “If I thought there was any hope of turning ‘World War Z’ into a movie, I wouldn’t have written it as a giant, epic, global story, because that requires a giant, epic, global budget.”

— Max Brooks

8. “They didn’t break me. I broke myself.”

— Max Brooks

9. “Fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.”

— Max Brooks

10. “I struggled so hard for a goal, without realizing that the goal is the struggle. It’s what makes me stronger, smarter, and better. Growth doesn’t come from a comfort zone, but from leaving it.”

— Max Brooks

11. “I don’t know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.”

— Max Brooks

12. “There’s a word for that kind of lie. Hope.”

— Max Brooks

13. “The dead walk among us. Zombies, ghouls-no matter what their label-these somnambulists are the greatest threat to humanity, other than humanity itself.”

— Max Brooks

14. “Can you ever “solve” poverty? Can you ever “solve” crime? Can you ever “solve” disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no.”

— Max Brooks

15. “I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.”

— Max Brooks

16. “Great risks come with great rewards.”

— Max Brooks

17. “Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent thinking clearly is never time wasted.”

— Max Brooks

18. “The human heart can only absorb so much pain.”

— Max Brooks

19. “You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?”

— Max Brooks

20. “When I believe in my ability to do something, there is no such word as no.”

— Max Brooks

21. “The dead walk among us.”

— Max Brooks

22. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells.”

— Max Brooks

23. “According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”

— Max Brooks

24. “Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has.”

— Max Brooks

25. “After all, why would a doctor worry about the confidentiality of her patient if she didn’t believe that patient was still alive?”

— Max Brooks

26. “The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts.”

— Max Brooks

27. “Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”

— Max Brooks

28. “If you believe you can accomplish everything by “cramming” at the eleventh hour, by all means, don’t lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining.”

— Max Brooks

29. “Secrecy is a vacuum and nothing fills a vacuum like paranoid speculation.”

— Max Brooks

30. “Survival is the key word to remember – not victory, not conquest, just survival.”

— Max Brooks

31. “Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack.”

— Max Brooks

32. “Use your head; cut off theirs.”

— Max Brooks

33. “Whatever bro, tell it to the whales.”

— Max Brooks

34. “There comes a point when you have to realize that the sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears will ultimately amount to zero.”

— Max Brooks

35. “Panic drowns thought,” I told the zombie, “so it’s time to stop panicking and start figuring out how to survive.”

— Max Brooks

36. “You can’t blame anyone else, not the plan’s architect, not your commanding officer, no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices.”

— Max Brooks

37. “Every rich man’s house has a servant’s entrance.”

— Max Brooks

38. “Fear is a real, present, right-in-your-face threat. Anxiety comes from a potential – or in this case, future – threat. Fear can be conquered. Anxiety has to be endured.”

— Max Brooks

39. “The book of war, the one we’ve been writing since one ape slapped another, was completely useless in this situation. We had to write a new one from scratch.”

— Max Brooks

40. “Freedom isn’t just something you have for the sake of having, you have to want something else first and then want the freedom to fight for it.”

— Max Brooks

41. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.”

— Max Brooks

42. “What an insane waste! We could have worked together, traded supplies, technical expertise. Who knows what we could have accomplished if we had only chucked the politics and come together as human bloody beings.”

— Max Brooks

43. “My coping mechanism with my dyslexia is to use wit and humor.”

— Max Brooks

44. “Americans worship technology. It’s an inherent trait in the national zeitgeist.”

— Max Brooks

45. “Zombies don’t run. They don’t dance. They don’t say, “More brains.” There is no Thriller Night. Those are stereotypes that are perpetrated by Hollywood, which I think is very irresponsible because it can get you killed.”

— Max Brooks

46. “Organize before they rise!”

— Max Brooks

47. “You can’t stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won’t leak, or at least won’t leak on the people who are gonna vote for you.”

— Max Brooks

48. “Those poor things. They sounded so scared and angry. And why wouldn’t they? What else should they feel when some horrible person released them into an environment they weren’t born for?”

— Max Brooks

49. “We lost a hell of a lot more than just people when we abandoned them to the dead.”

— Max Brooks

50. “You assume things, like whatever country has more firepower wins the wars, and that’s actually not true at all.”

— Max Brooks