Time & Perspective Quote by R. Lee Ermey

Spoken by R. Lee Ermey, that line reads like small talk, but it’s a loaded kind of understatement: a drill instructor’s version of “things aren’t what they used to be,” delivered with the credibility of someone who helped define what “used to be” looked like. Ermey isn’t merely noting bureaucratic updates. He’s signaling a cultural argument about toughness, discipline, and what institutions are allowed to demand from young bodies in a different era.

The phrase “a lot of changes” is doing strategic work. It’s vague enough to cover everything from training doctrine and technology to rules about hazing, language, and liability, without naming any single reform as the villain. That vagueness lets the listener fill in the grievance: softer recruits, softer society, a military constrained by public scrutiny. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

“Recruit training” also carries mythic weight in American imagination: the furnace that turns civilians into Marines, soldiers, professionals. By placing it on a twenty-year timeline, Ermey frames tradition as something under pressure, and casts himself as a witness to decline or modernization, depending on your politics. He’s not pleading a case so much as setting the stage for one.

Context matters because Ermey lived in the space where the military becomes entertainment and moral instruction. As a soldier (and later an iconic screen drill instructor), he understood that boot camp is both preparation and performance. The line quietly asks: when the performance changes, does the country change with it - or against it?