Quotes about militarism
Michael Parenti - Against Empire
Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.
Dwight D. Eisenhower -
Only Americans can hurt America.
Charles Edward Montague -
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
P.J. Sullivan - Mostly Rapscallions: Salient Sillies about the Rich and Infamous in History
When he won, it proved that God was on his side. When he didn't win, it meant that God wanted him to try harder.
Barbara W. Tuchman - The Guns of August
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
Craig Nelson -
If everyone loves you, maybe you don't need so many tanks.
John Thomas Nall - GOD SAVE THE SOUTH: And a Treasure Chest of Forbidden Information
The Pledge of Allegiance (1892) was the origin of the raised arm salute adopted later by the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis). The Pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, cousin to Edward Bellamy (the author), and both were self-proclaimed national socialists in the United States. The original Pledge began with a military salute that was then extended out toward the flag. In practice, the second gesture was performed palm down. The gesture was not an ancient Roman salute. All of th
Brian Spellman -
He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword ... unless he's a general.
Brian Spellman -
Spare the rod and spoil the Memorial Day rotisserie.
Charles Hamilton Sorley - Marlborough and Other Poems
When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"When you see millions of the mouthless deadAcross your dreams in pale battalions go,Say not soft things as other men have said,That you'll remember. For you need not so.Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they knowIt is not curses heaped on each gashed head?Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,"Yet many a better one has died before."Then, scanning
Artur Fidler -
The release of the book just tomorrow. Get ready for a good dose of adrenaline ;-) Meanwhile, I have for you next article. Let’s talk about terroritstic activity in Afghanistan. The problem with which we are dealing today almost everywhere. And turning back to the Wild Heads of War, in the book you will find a lot of military action in Afghanistan, led by NATO soldiers. One of them was my friend, who in 2009 was killed by IED (Improvised Explosive Device). The book tells the stories based on fic
Arundhati Roy - The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy
When you live in the United States, with the roar of the free market, the roar of this huge military power, the roar of being at the heart of empire, it's hard to hear the whispering of the rest of the world. And I think many US citizens want to. I don't think that all of them necessarily are co-conspirators in this concept of empire. And those who are not, need to listen to other stories in the world - other voices, other people.
Arundhati Roy - The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy
The policies the US government is following are dangerous for its citizens. It's true that you can bomb or buy out anybody that you want to, but you can't control the rage that's building in the world. You just can't. And that rage will express itself in some way or the other. Condemning violence when a section of your economy is based on selling weapons and making bombs and piling up chemical and biological weapons? When the soul of your culture worships violence? On what grounds are you going
Rob Nixon - Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
It is a pervasive condition of empires that they affect great swathes of the planet without the empire's populace being aware of that impact - indeed without being aware that many of the affected places even exist. How many Americans are are of the continuing socioenvironmental fallout from U.S. militarism and foreign policy decisions made three or four decades ago in, say, Angola or Laos? How many could even place those nation-states on a map?
W.E.B. Du Bois -
What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?
Dave Eggers - The Wild Things
Maybe he hadn't thought the war through. It had seemed like simple fun when he had first pictured it, with a glorious beginning, a difficult but valor-filled middle, and a victorious end. He hadn't accounted for the fact that there might not be much of a resolution to the battle, and he hadn't imagined what it would feel like when the war just sort of ended, without anyone admitting defeat and congratulating him for his bravery.
Bertrand Russell - Why Men Fight
War grows out of ordinary human nature.
Jeannette Rankin -
The greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic.
Robert Jackson Bennett - City of Blades
You are wrong,” says the man. His voice is low and resonant. The metal walls of the dome, all the knives and swords and spears, all seem to vibrate with each of his words. “Your rulers and their propaganda have sold you this watered-down conceit of war, of a warrior yoked to the whims of civilization. Yet for all their self-professed civility, your rulers will gladly spend a soldier’s life to better aid their posturing, to keep the cost of a crude good low. They will send the children of others
Rauschenbusch Walter 1861-1918 -
When we comprehend how few wars have ever been fought for the sake of justice or the people; how personal spite, the ambition of military professionals, and the protection of capitalistic ventures are the real moving powers...then the mythology of war will no longer bring us to our knees.
William L. Shirer -
We could see in our own country as late as the 1960's and 1970's how good Christian and Jewish men, the pillars of our society, when they acceded to political and military power, could sit calmly and cooly in their air-conditioned offices in Washington and cold-bloodedly, without a qualm or a moral quiver, plan and order the massacre of hundred of thousands of men, women and children and the destruction of their homes, farms, churches, schools and hospitals in a faraway Asian land of poor peasan
Robert Jackson Bennett - City of Blades
Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?
Bertrand De Jouvenel - Sovereignty
The entire stock of relationships which suited in war—militiae—was regarded as inadmissible and improper in peace—domi. We have the measure of how right the Romans were in this respect in the experience of the intellectual and moral impoverishment brought about by total mobilisation.
Dave Eggers - The Wild Things
Max had to think about these new developments. He hadn't liked getting hit by a rock--his stomach still ached from then rock Judith had thrown--but then again, when his team had used rocks on Alexander, it had caused him to surrender. Now the Bad Guys only had three soldiers left, which would make victory for Max's team more likely. So now it made perfect sense. He was wrong to ban rocks, or even animals. The key was to use all the weapons at one's disposal, but to just make sure you won when yo
Manuel Azaña -
What does the corpse care who was right and who was wrong?
Arnold Joseph Toynbee -
Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace.
David T. Dellinger -
Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament.
Lierre Keith - and Sustainability
This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue.
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski -
If you want peace, prepare for ideological war with those who want others to prepare for physical war.
Colman McCarthy -
Flacks for both war-obsessed governments immediately blamed the other side for the deaths of the civilians.
W.E. Woodward -
No man can be a Christian and a soldier at the same time, for the two ideas are wholly incompatible.
Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America
The passion for war is so intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so injurious to the welfare of the State, that a man does not consider himself honored in defending it, at the risk of his life.
Jonathan Glover - Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
Sir Edward Grey echoed this: More than one true thing may be said about the causes of the war, but the statement that comprises most truth is that militarism and the armaments inseparable from it made war inevitable. Armaments were intended to produce a sense of security in each nation – that was the justification put forward in defence of them. What they really did was to produce fear in everybody.