- Brian Moreland: Sir, how could they do this?
- General Harlan Bache: With the stroke of a pen, sir. Their field of honor was a desktop.
- Colonel Kerby: You're not a soldier! I'm a soldier, with the career goal of all soldiers - staying alive in situations where it ain't all that easy to do! You're a death-lover. Some sorry son of a bitch has got you convinced that dying for a cause is oh, so romantic. Well, that's the worst kind of all the kinds of bullshit there is!
- General Harlan Bache: I know men younger than myself who have taken a pension, put on stupid little white shirts... cut off sleeves, alligator on the tit... and spent the rest of their days beating the hell out of a little white ball with an iron club. My God... the thought of it makes me want to puke.
- General Harlan Bache: I'm afraid it's not quite that simple, son. There's a feeling on the outside that schools like this are anachronistic, and leaders of men like you and me are dinosaurs.
- Brian Moreland: Sir?
- General Harlan Bache: Well, you go to the movies, you read books. A military leader is always portrayed as slightly insane. Very often more than slightly. That's because it is insane to cling to honor in a world where honor is held in contempt.
- Brian Moreland: They want us to be good little boys now so we can fight some war for them in the future. Some war they'll decide on. We'd rather fight our own war right now.
- Brian Moreland: When my mother died, I was sitting in the hallway in the army hospital. I was worried as hell. I knew she was real sick. She had this bad kidney thing. So I'm sitting there and my father comes out of the room and tells me that she's dead. He led me to this little chapel they had there, and he sat me down and he told me I could cry for fifteen minutes. He gave me fifteen minutes to cry, and after that I wasn't supposed to cry again. So he left me alone in the chapel and came back... he came back fifteen minutes later.
- Alex Dwyer: Jesus. What did you do?
- Brian Moreland: Well, I did what I was told. I cried for fifteen minutes.
- General Harlan Bache: [to Brian Moreland] Never be ashamed of being human. Without humanity a leader becomes a tyrant.
- [the cadets have taken over the academy]
- Master Sergeant Kevin Moreland: Let me tell 'em it was growing pains - the wrong execution of the right idea.
- Brian Moreland: "The wrong execution of the right idea"?
- David Shawn: [about firing his assault rifle at the townies and cops, to facilitate their escape] I saw my duty, and I did it.
- Alex Dwyer: What the hell were you doing back there?
- David Shawn: At least I had your ass over the grinder and it's okay enough to thank me, shithead!
- Brian Moreland: Hut! What's the problem?
- Alex Dwyer: The problem is that this asshole just shot the town!
- David Shawn: Hey, Brian, Dungeons and Dragons game tonight?
- Brian Moreland: Nah, not tonight, Shawn.
- Alex Dwyer: Nice of you to ask.
- David Shawn: [gives Dwyer the finger]
- Alex Dwyer: Have a good day.
- David Shawn: Brian, Dungeons and Dragons game tonight?
- Brian Moreland: Can't.
- [David flips Alex the finger]
- Alex Dwyer: Have a good day.
- J.C. Pierce: [the truck won't start] Aw, shit!
- Alex Dwyer: Want me to check under the hood?
- J.C. Pierce: For what?
- Alex Dwyer: I'll know when I get there, won't I?
- General Harlan Bache: [Bache is talking with Moreland and the outgoing Cadet Major, on the occassion of Moreland's ascendancy to the same rank for the next class] Honor. Burglar-proof, fool-proof, weather-proof, one hundred-proof.
- Colonel Kerby: Eleven boys jumped the wall last night.
- Brian Moreland: That sounds like eleven boys who wouldn't have been much good to us.
- David Shawn: When this is over, you and me are going to go round and round.
- Alex Dwyer: But first, you're gonna move your goddamned arm