The Caine Mutiny Quotes

“This life is slow suicide, unless you read.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Remember this, if you can--there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven't. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end--only in the end it becomes more obvious.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Life is a dream, a little more coherent than most.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“You can’t understand command till you’ve had it. It’s the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world. It’s a nightmare, unless you’re an ox. You’re forever teetering along a tiny path of correct decisions and good luck that meanders through an infinite gloom of possible mistakes.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“So I have gone all the way around Robin Hood's barn to arrive at the old platitudes, which I guess is the process of growing up.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Money is a very pleasant thing, Willie, and I think you can trade almost anything for it wisely except the work you really want to do. If you sell out your time for a comfortable life, and give up your natural work, I think you lose the exchange. There remains an inner uneasiness that spoils the comforts.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“With the smoke of the dead sailor's cigar wreathing around him, Willie passed to thinking about death and life and luck and God. Philosophers are at home with such thoughts, perhaps, but for other people it is actual torture when these concepts--not the words, the realities--break through the crust of daily occurrences and grip the soul. A half hour of such racking meditation can change the ways of a lifetime.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Willie didn't have a historian's respect for the victories at Guadalcanal, Stalingrad, and Midway. The stream of news as it burbled by his mind left only a confused impression that our side was a bit ahead in the game, but making painful slow work of it. He had often wondered in his boyhood what it must have been like to live in the stirring days of Gettysburg and Waterloo; now he knew, but he didn't know that he knew. This war seemed to him different from all the others: diffuse, slogging, and empty of drama.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“The trouble started one morning when there was a fog.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“He’s too clever to be wise, if that makes any sense. Very”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven’t. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end—only at the end it becomes more obvious. Use your time while you have it, Willie, in making something of yourself.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Seventeen days before the end of the war, the minesweeper Caine finally swept a mine.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“the one loophole that military wisdom can never quite button up—the sympathy of the downtrodden for each other.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Cabs, cabs! Why did God give you feet? Walk me to Fiftieth.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Can’t stop a Nazi with a lawbook.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Remember this, if you can—there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven’t. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end—only at the end it becomes more obvious. Use your time while you have it, Willie, in making something of yourself.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Aye aye, sir.” Willie saluted and emerged into the sunlight, through the one loophole that military wisdom can never quite button up—the sympathy of the downtrodden for each other.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“He still had not the slightest understanding of why he had really come; he blamed himself for a late flare of desire crudely masked as a need for advice. He had no way of recognizing the very common impulse of a husband to talk things over with his wife.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“no man who rises to command of a United States naval ship can possibly be a coward. And”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“don’t make the mistake of skipping the Old Testament. It’s the core of all religion, I”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“the nameless maiden in the advertisement was like a thousand other clothing models he had seen in magazines—arched brows, big eyes, angular cheeks, pouting mouth, a fetching figure, and a haughty, revolted look, as though someone had just offered her a jellyfish to hold.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Duce, damn your whipped-cream soul, do you know anything that can clear up this crazy mess?”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“You can't assume a goddamned thing in this Navy.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Willie experienced the strange sensations of the first days of a new captain: a shrinking of his personal identiy, and a stretching out of his nerve ends to all the spaces and machinery of the ship. He was less free than before. He developed the apprehensive listening ears of a young mother; the ears listened on in his sleep; he never quite slept, not the way he had before.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“Well, most of you are pretty new to the Caine. It’s a broken-down obsolete ship. It steamed through four years of war. It has no unit citation and it achieved nothing spectacular. It was supposed to be a mine-sweeper, but in the whole war it swept six mines. It did every kind of menial fleet duty, mostly several hundred thousand miles of dull escorting. Now it’s a damaged hulk and will probably be broken up. Every hour spent on the Caine was a great hour in all our lives—if you don’t think so now you will later on, more and more. We were all doing part of what had to be done to keep our country existing, not any better than before, just the same old country that we love. We’re all landlubbers who pitted our lives and brains against the sea and the enemy, and did what we were told to do. The hours we spent on the Caine were hours of glory. They are all over. We’ll scatter into the trains and busses now and most of us will go home. But we will remember the Caine, the old ship in which we helped to win the war. Caine duty is the kind of duty that counts. The high-powered stuff just sets the date and place of the victory won by the Caine. “Lower the flag.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“I almost died, and I realized that all I regretted was you.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“You’re not supposed to love Jews necessarily, just to give them a fair shake.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“The officers had tried very hard to make the crew look respectable for the occasion; but despite the shoeshines and new dungarees and shaved faces the general effect was that of a group of tramps freshly deloused by the Salvation Army.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny

“I like novels where the author proves how terrible military guys are, and how superior sensitive civilians are. I know they’re true to life because I’m a sensitive civilian myself.” He puffed at the cigar, made a mouth of distaste, and threw it into a brass jar half full of sand.”
― Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny