MASH Quotes

Here are some notable quotes from the show:

"Did you ever show me any kind of friendship? Ask my help with a personal problem? Include me in one of your little bull sessions? Can you imagine what it feels like to walk by this tent and hear you laughing and know I'm not welcome? Did you ever once ever offer me a lousy cup of coffee?"

"Well, boys, it would be hard to call what we've been through fun, but I'm sure glad we went through it together. You boys always managed to give me a good laugh right when I needed it most. Never forget the time you dropped Winchester's drawers in the O.R. 'Course I had to pretend I was mad at ya, but inside I was laughing to beat all hell."

"Sir, I thought it over and I was lying before when I said the baby wasn't mine. It's hers, mine, and ours...No, you guys wouldn't know me when I was in town. I mean..uh..I remember that night 'cause I took a shower. I was wearing my paratrooper scarf with nothing on underneath. I had maybe two beers and I was looking for trouble. I wanted to get a tattoo, but the guy had printed 'mother' so much that he'd run out of ink. So I was taking the jeep back home and I saw her hitching a ride by the side of the road and I stopped. And..uh..I'd rather not say anything more in front of the baby."

"I'd like a dry martini, Mr. Quoc, a very dry martini. A very dry, arrid, barren, desiccated, veritable dustbowel of a martini. I want a martini that could be declared a disaster area. Mix me just such a martini."

"I don't fall over, captain. Everything around here will be just fine if there's a little less leaning a lot more leadership. We need obedience. We need discipline, not this chaos. Doctors like you constantly out of uniform. Nurses who don't belong in uniform. Dogs running around loose in camp...they're getting run over by jeeps."

"I just don't know why they're shooting at us. All we want to do is bring them democracy and white bread. Transplant the American dream. Freedom. Achievement. Hyperacidity. Affluence. Flatulence. Technology. Tension. The inalienable right to an early coronary sitting at your desk while plotting to stab your boss in the back. That's entertainment."

"A war is like when it rains in New York and everybody crowds into doorways, ya know? And they all get chummy together. Perfect strangers. The only difference, of course, is in a war it's also raining on the other side of the street and the people who are chummy over there are trying to kill the people who are over here who are chums."

"I don't think this place is turning out to be that great an experience for me. I mean I work under terrible pressure and everything and there's a lot of death and destruction and stuff but outside of that I don't think I'm really getting much out of it."

"Listen, Radar, I guess you realize I'm kinda fond of you. Lord knows I've never met a soul I could depend on more, but above all that, you've been a damn good friend. Well, friend, it's time we said goodbye. Time you got on with your life. You've come as far as you can go here. You've earned your wings...now you've gotta fly."

"Listen, when you love somebody, you're always in trouble. There's only two things you can do about it: either stop loving 'em, or love 'em a whole lot more."

"I've eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish! I've eaten so much fish, I'm ready to grow gills! I've eaten so much liver, I can only make love if I'm smothered in bacon and onions!"

"I have a message. Lt. Col. Henry Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There weren't no survivors."

"I will not carry a gun, Frank. When I got thrown into this war I had a clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns. I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!"

"... but know this: You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can incarcerate me with two moronic cellmates. You can torture me with your thrice-daily swill. But you cannot break the spirit of a Winchester. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness, and I shall be delivered from this fetid and festering sewer."

"I'm reminded of a story, you've probably heard it. The king and queen of this country were playing golf with five clubs. Their son Jack remarked how strange it was that they only had two hearts between them. And just then his sister Little Deucy and her dog Tre started singing 'Four Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend,' whereupon the whole family beat her to death and buried her with two spades."

"I am the essence of overconfidence! I am speculation, adventure, the spirit of pursuit, the stag howling for its winsome yet anonymous mate. I am the love call of evolution; the perfume and color of the flowers as they offer their pollen to the gentle buzz of the bees. I am sex itself, gentlemen. I am life. I am appetite!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice."

"Look, all I know is what they taught me at command school. There are certain rules about a war and rule number one is young men die. And rule number two is doctors can't change rule number one."

"Look, you can't lay all that on my shoulders. Don't you know how much this place stinks? Don't you know what it's like to stand day after day in blood? In the blood of children? I hate this place. And if I can't stand up to it to your satisfaction, then... then the hell with it. How dare you? The hell with your Iowa naivete, and the hell with your hero worship and your teddy bear, and while you're at it, the hell with you! Why don't you grow up for crying out loud? I'm not here for you to admire. I'm here to pull bodies out of a sausage grinder, if possible without going crazy. Period."

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