Top 40 R. Lee Ermey Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A day without blood is like a day without sunshine!”

— R. Lee Ermey

2. “Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair.”

— R. Lee Ermey

3. “I’m never, like I say, I’m never happy, I’m never satisfied, it’s never good enough.”

— R. Lee Ermey

4. “There’s a lot of whiners in every crowd.”

— R. Lee Ermey

5. “I hate to hear ‘Less is more.’ It’s a crock of crap.”

— R. Lee Ermey

6. “What is your major malfunction?”

— R. Lee Ermey

7. “Without discipline, there is no Marine Corp.”

— R. Lee Ermey

8. “Everybody respects the Vietnam Veterans of America.”

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

10. “I honestly do feel that I am a role model for young people.”

— R. Lee Ermey

11. “America’s trying to do the best for its veterans.”

— R. Lee Ermey

12. “I play well with everybody.”

— R. Lee Ermey

13. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

14. “There was a huge, tremendous amount of disabled veterans and the Veteran’s Administration just wasn’t geared up for it. I know for a fact that it’s getting better and better.”

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

16. “I disagree with a lot of those changes, however at the end of the day – I go down to recruit graduation at least once or twice a year.”

— R. Lee Ermey

17. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

19. “I spend a lot of time with my characters.”

— R. Lee Ermey

20. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

21. “Finally, mutually, and completely, they released all doubts, abandoned all fears, unwilling and unable to deny this overpowering love.”

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

23. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

24. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

27. “Back in those days intimidation was the greatest tool the drill instructor had. Without that tool, he would not have had control.”

— R. Lee Ermey

28. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

29. “The bad news motivated the drill instructors that much more.”

— R. Lee Ermey

30. “I always love to come to Austin.”

— R. Lee Ermey

31. “This is for fighting, this is for fun.”

— R. Lee Ermey

Featured in: Fun Quotes

32. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

33. “Try as you may, you can never defy love.”

— R. Lee Ermey

34. “Communications are better now than in my Vietnam days.”

— R. Lee Ermey

35. “Kubrick’s films have life – they just never die.”

— R. Lee Ermey

36. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

37. “I try to get over to Iraq and Afghanistan as much as I can.”

— R. Lee Ermey

38. “I don’t have to be concerned about everybody else’s character.”

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey

41. “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.”

— R. Lee Ermey

42. “That’s all I cared about too, was getting it right.”

— R. Lee Ermey

43. “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!”

— R. Lee Ermey

44. “In order to be a good actor, I’m a firm believer that you need to bring something to the table.”

— R. Lee Ermey

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

— R. Lee Ermey