Ed Avery: [of wife Lou] It's a shame that I didn't marry someone who was my intellectual equal.


--James Mason (as Ed Avery) in Bigger Than Life

Ed Avery: Childhood is a congenital disease - and the purpose of education is to cure it. We're breeding a race of moral midgets.


--James Mason (as Ed Avery) in Bigger Than Life

Ed Avery: God was wrong!


--James Mason (as Ed Avery) in Bigger Than Life

Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: [Hitler just sent an order not to retreat from El Alamein] It's an order, Bayerlein, a military order from General Headquarters. A clear, straight, stupid, criminal military order, from General Headquarters.
Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: And what are you going to do, double the insanity by obeying it? We've got the best soldiers in the German Army here. They may be just hanging on now, but they're still a force, they're still fighting. If we take them out now, they can fight again tomorrow. But this! This is sheer madness! It's out of the Middle Ages. Nobody had said "Victory or Death" since people fought with bows and arrows. Why, this is an order to throw away an entire army!
Gen. Schultz: If I may remind you, sir, here in the field, these men are yours, not his.
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: I just can't understand it.
Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: I can. He's insane.
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: He's not insane! He's - but neither am I.
[tears up the message and throws it away]
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: Pull them out, Bayerlein! I'll argue with him about it later.


--James Mason (as Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel) in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: I'm told you once called me a clown... A clown of Hitler's. I must tell you I've said worse about you... Many times.
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: I find it very hard to concentrate on remarks made about me.
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: Did you say it?
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: Whoever said it, you've given ample reason to regret such a foolish remark.


--James Mason (as Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel) in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: [It's] too late for me. I'm seventy now - too old to fight, too old to challenge authority, however evil... but not too old, however, to wish you and your friends the best of luck in their extremely interesting enterprise.


--James Mason (as Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel) in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: From the moment the Bohemian corporal promoted himself to the supreme command of our forces, the German Army has been the victim of a unique situation: not only too many of the enemy, but one too many Germans.


--James Mason (as Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel) in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: His astrologers have informed him that this is only a feint, that the real invasion is yet to come, north of Calais. The Fifteenth Army is sitting on those cold beaches up there, waiting for an invasion that is already taking place, is an excellent example of war by horoscope.


--James Mason (as Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel) in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: I tell you this in confidence, Rommel: I don't think anything we can do would be of the slightest use. The pattern for defeat has already been set. "Hold fast. Don't give up a millimeter of ground. Victory or death." Wars simply can't be won by men whose knowledge of tactics is based on copybook maxims. They may stir schoolchildren, but they don't stop troops. But give me a free hand for a few months and I'd make them pay for it. I'd make them pay such a price in blood they'd wish they'd never heard of Germany. I might not be able to stop them all, but they'd know they'd fought an army, not a series of stationary targets.


--James Mason (as Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel) in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

Field Marshal Keitel: Have you any better suggestions?
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: Yes, one very much better. Make peace, you idiot!


--James Mason (as Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel) in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel