Top 10 Best Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

Erich Maria Remarque is a German writer born on June 22, 1898, in Osnabrück, Germany. He is best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, which was published in 1929 and became an instant classic. The novel is a realistic portrayal of the horrors of the First World War, and its success made Remarque an international celebrity. Remarque served in the German army during World War I, and his experiences on the front line greatly influenced his work. After the war, he worked as a teacher and journalist before devoting himself full-time to writing. In addition to All Quiet on the Western Front, he wrote several other novels, including Three Comrades, Arc de Triomphe, and A Night in Lisbon. Despite his success as a writer, Remarque’s works were banned by the Nazis, who regarded them as anti-German propaganda. He eventually left Germany and lived in Switzerland and the United States before settling in Porto Ronco, Switzerland, where he died on September 25, 1970.

             Here are his 10 best quotes:

• “I am young, I am twenty years of age; but I know nothing of life except despair, death, fear, and the combination of completely mindless superficiality with an abyss of suffering. I see people being driven against one another, and silently, uncomprehendingly, foolishly, obediently and innocently killing one another. I see the best brains in the world inventing weapons and words to make the whole process that much more sophisticated and long-lasting. And watching this with me are all my contemporaries, here and on the other side, all over the world – my whole generation is experiencing this with me.” (All Quiet on the Western Front)
• “It’s weird when you think about it. We live in the 20th century, but we still live in the Middle Ages.”
• “Being a soldier is a tiring job.”
• “We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through. I did not want to think so much about her.”
• “I am free and therefore lost.”
• “You can’t know anything beforehand. The incurable can survive the healthy. Life is a strange phenomenon.”
• “I’ll tell you what war is. War is a disease. It’s like typhus.”
• “A hospital alone shows what war is.”
• “We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.” (All Quiet on the Western Front)
• “If you imagine humanity as one big body, then war is like suicide or, at best, self-mutilation.”