The Caine Mutiny is a award-winning novel, by Herman Wouk. Based in part on the author's autobiographical background on minesweepers, the book received the Pulitzer Prize in 1951. here are a few quotes from Wouk's famous work.
"Willis Seward Keith stepped out of the sunshine across the threshold. It was done as easily and noiselessly as Alice's stepping through the looking glass; and like Alice, Willie Keith passed into a new and exceedingly strange world." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"If you want to know, what I've studied seems to me a lot of rubbish. The rules, the lingo, strike me as comical. The idea of men spending their lives in this make-believe appalls me." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"It seems to me that you're very much like our whole country-young, naïve, spoiled, and softened by abundance and good luck, but with an interior hardness that comes from your sound stock." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
continue reading below our video
10 Best Universities in the United States
"War is a business in which a lot of people watch a few people get killed and are damn glad it wasn't them." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"I'll tell you this, the same things seem goddamn different in the middle of a typhoon when they're happening, and six thousand miles away in the Federal Office Building when you're talking about them-" -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"Queeg deserved better at my hands." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"See Willie, there is one lousy thing about having brains. Makes me worse off than Queeg. He could swallow all his own feeble self-protecting lies because he was a stupid man. But I can analyze. I'm imprisoned forever by the fact that I jumped." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"Everybody's life pivots on one or maybe two moments." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
"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." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
