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Max Brooks Quotes

Maximillian Michael Brooks is an American actor and author. He is the son of comedy filmmaker Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft. Much of Brooks's writing focuses on zombie stories. He is a lecturer at the Modern War Institute at West Point, New York. Wikipedia  

✵ 22. May 1972
Max Brooks photo

Works

World War Z
World War Z
Max Brooks
The Zombie Survival Guide
Max Brooks: 41 quotes2 likes

Famous Max Brooks Quotes

“Use your head; cut off theirs.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide

“Ignorance was the enemy. Lies and superstition, misinformation, disinformation. Sometimes, no information at all. Ignorance killed billions of people. Ignorance caused the Zombie War. Imagine if we had known then what we know now. Imagine if the undead virus had been as understood as, say, tuberculosis was. Imagine if the world’s citizens, or at least those charged with protecting those citizens, had known exactly what they were facing. Ignorance was the real enemy, and cold, hard facts were the weapons.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Page 194-195
World War Z (2006)

“When I believe in my ability to do something, there is no such word as no.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“If you believe you can accomplish everything by "cramming" at the eleventh hour, by all means, don't lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

“To know is always better, no matter what the answer might be.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“… show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they're going to be okay.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Max Brooks Quotes about people

“Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“They teach you how to resist the enemy, how to protect your mind and spirit. They don’t teach you how to resist your own people, especially people who think they’re trying to “help” you see “the truth.””

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

“Well alright, anyone who has dreams of world empire, look what it did to Britain (chuckles heartily). There's a reason that whole country is one big Smith song. That's actually one exciting thing about studying history, there did come a point towards the end of the 19th century where the British were just like, "this ain't worth it mate". There's a reason why in 1945 they gave us the keys to the world. They were like, "here, it's yours, take it, go, we're fine, no? India, go. Africa, go." Because they'd had enough. Because it's really hard, we can't even run ourselves. We literally have people storming our capital with signs saying, "government, keep your hands off my social security". If we can't handle that, do we really want to try and run, Africa? I think what we need is not so much world empire, I think we need closer cooperation, closer alliances.”

Max Brooks

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

“Do you know how many times, when I was a kid, going to Europe, having a Frenchman try to get on my case about Vietnam. And that wasn't the problem, do you know what it was like to have other kids, other American students go, "yeah, it's pretty bad, in Vietnam, we should, yeah". And I'd be like, 'but, mhmm, French Indochina.', and they'd be like, "Oh is that near Vietnam" (groans). We don't educate our young people, and then we send them out into the world, as ambassadors as lameness. So no, no world empire, I don't want to be responsible for the plumbing in Rwanda, but we do need to become as much of a student of them as they are of us. Because, here's the thing. Well, the problem with the global village, remember in the early 90's, with the term now, global village, well the problem with the global village is that a lot of people are waking up realizing that they are in the global villages ghetto. And now with media, we are broadcasting these images of our wealth, and our power, our society, and the people in the global village are looking up on the hill seeing that mansion, but we're not looking down into the slum, and we need to do that. There's just so many times you can drive slowly through the ghetto in a rich convertible before you get carjacked. So this is what I mean, we need to engage…”

Max Brooks

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

“People say, "get us out of the UN, we don't need the UN", we invented the UN. This is us, we are the ones who founded the idea of nations working together, and I think that's something we need to do. And it's, it's messy, and it's really complicated, and there's going to be a lot of countries out there that expect us to clean up there mess, or just want to see us fall on (our) face. And they love that, which is what I think president Obama said brilliantly at the UN, when he basically said, "that ok". If I'm paraphrasing, I don't think he's ever said "ok" in his life, he's probably said "well". But basically he said, "look, for the last eight years you've been on our case about going it alone, you know, we're imperialists, we're hegemonic, we're going it alone, we're going it alone… Ok, we're not going it alone anymore, we're going to listen to you, but you better ante up and kick in. Because, you don't have the right to have an opinion, if you can't back it up. It's put up or shut up time". And I was so happy when he said that, and the way he handled the Latin (American) countries, when he was dealing with the crisis in Central America, the coups in Honduras. And he said, "the very same countries who accuse us of doing nothing, are also the same ones who accuse us of being imperialistic. You can't have it both ways."”

Max Brooks

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

Max Brooks Quotes about thinking

“Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent
thinking clearly is never time wasted.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide

“If there's four Vietcong in a village with knives and punji sticks, we'll bring in a B-52. And I think, sometimes we need to learn to fight smarter instead of to fight richer. And this is what I mean, you know, education, "oh, education's expensive;" no it's not, books are cheap, (the) internet's cheap, we can fight smarter, we can learn. So, that's where resource-to-kill-ratio comes from.”

Max Brooks

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

“There's a little pond, in a small town in Poland, where they used to dump the ashes. The pond is still gray, even half a century later. I've heard it said that the holocaust had no survivors, that even those who managed to remain technically alive were so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, their soul, the person that they were supposed to be, was gone forever. I'd like to think that's not true. But if it is, then no one on Earth survived this war.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

Max Brooks Quotes

“So the next time someone tries to tell you about how the true losses of this war are "our innocence" or "part of our humanity"… Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z
Context: You wanna know who lost World War Z? Whales. I guess they never really had a chance, not with several million hungry boat people and half the world's navies converted to fishing fleets. [... ] So the next time someone tries to tell you about how the true losses of this war are "our innocence" or "part of our humanity"... Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales.

“Point is, that's the image of those in uniform, and it couldn't be further from the truth.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z
Context: Attack. When I first heard that word, my gut reaction was, "oh shit". Does that surprise you? Of course it does. You probably expected "the brass" to be just champing at that bit, all that blood and guts, "hold 'em by the nose while we kick 'em in the ass" crap. I don't know who created the stereotype hard-charging, dim-witted, high school football coach of a general officer. Maybe it was Hollywood, or the civilian press, or maybe we did it to ourselves, by allowing those insipid, egocentric clowns- the MacArthurs and Halseys and Curtis E. LeMays- to define our image to the rest of the country. Point is, that's the image of those in uniform, and it couldn't be further from the truth.

“Who knows if this is humanity’s greatest weakness or strength? The debate continues, and probably will forever.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

The Zombie Survival Guide
Context: Joy, sadness, confidence, anxiety, love, hatred, fear—all of these feelings and thousands more that make up the human “heart” are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name. Who knows if this is humanity’s greatest weakness or strength? The debate continues, and probably will forever.

“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide

“The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“There's a word for that kind of lie. Hope.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Sometimes you find your path, sometimes it finds you.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“[…]you don’t have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“You can't blame anyone else,…, no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Whatever bro, tell it to the whales”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“They didn't break me. I broke myself.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Hooking on scuba gear and blindly diving into zombie-infested water is a wonderful way to mix the two childhood terrors of being eaten and drowning.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

“Americans worship technology. It's an inherent trait in the national zeitgeist.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“There comes a point when you have to realize that the sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears will ultimately amount to zero.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“There comes a point where emotions must give way to objective facts.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Can you ever "solve" poverty? Can you ever "solve" crime? Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“The Allies had the resources, industry, and logistics of an entire planet. The Axis, on the other hand, had to depend on what scant assets they could scrape up within their borders. This time we were the Axis.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

“As soon as the report came in, [General Lang] sat down at his desk, signed a few final orders, addressed and sealed a letter to his family, then put a bullet through his brain. Bastard. I hate him now even more than I did on the way to Hamburg… he knew this was just the first step of a long war and we were going to need men like him to win it… That's why he deserted us like we deserted those civilians. He saw the road ahead, a steep, treacherous mountain road. We'd all have to hike that road, each of us dragging the boulder of what he'd done behind us. [Lang] couldn't do that. He couldn't shoulder the weight.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

“No one would have expected [the escalation of nuclear hostilities], but then again, no one would have expected the dead to rise, now would they? Only one could have foreseen this, and I don’t believe in him anymore.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

“We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.””

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

“The dead walk among us. Zombies, ghouls — no matter what their label — these somnambulists are the greatest threat to humanity, other than humanity itself.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Introduction, p. xiii
The Zombie Survival Guide (2003)

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