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I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. ~Major General Smedley D. Butler
I threw families onto the street in Iraq, only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country, in this tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis. We need to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. They're not people whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable. It's the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable. It's the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not five thousand miles away. They are right here at home. ~ Michael Prysner
if you add in... veterans’ issues & ... nuclear weapons, over a trillion dollars that we spend every year on militarism. ~Medea Benjamin
The Pentagon budget is out of control. It’s been out of control since after World War II. And then especially since after 9/11 and the war on terrorism has been an excuse to keep building up and building up and building up the Pentagon budget. ~Medea Benjamin
The only thing that is going to counter this is if we get Congress to stand up to pass legislation that says, “We will not allow any unauthorized attack on either Iran or Venezuela,” if we get all of the presidential candidates to stand up and say no to an attack on Iran and if we get the American people to be very loud and clear saying, “We are totally opposed to any attack on Iran.” ~Medea Benjamin
War is a racket. It always has been. ~Major General Smedley D. Butler
We are told we are fighting terrorists. The real terrorist was me. And the real terrorism is this occupation. ~ Michael Prysner
If a catechumen or a believer seeks to become a soldier, they must be rejected, for they have despised God. ~ Hippolytus of Rome

The military, also called the armed forces, are forces authorized to use deadly force, and weapons, to support the interests of the state and some or all of its citizens. The task of the military is usually defined as defense of the state and its citizens, and the prosecution of war against another state.

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A

  • But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. "Might makes right," and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.
    • Adin Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance: In All its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended (1846).

B

  • Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, "It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be."
    • Francis Bacon, "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates," The Essays or Counsels Civil & Moral of Francis Bacon, p. 129 (1905). Bacon quoted the words of Thyrsis in Virgil's Eclogue VII.
  • The Pentagon budget is out of control. It’s been out of control since after World War II. And then especially since after 9/11 and the war on terrorism has been an excuse to keep building up and building up and building up the Pentagon budget. Even Trump himself said the other day that the Pentagon budget was out of control. But then he goes and he asked for more money for the Pentagon.
    So...if you add in things like the veterans’ issues and the Energy Department that deals with nuclear weapons, over a trillion dollars that we spend every year on militarism. And that’s where we have to address how we can pull money out of the Pentagon, not affect our safety and security; in fact, make us safer, because we will [not] be antagonizing so many other countries with endless wars.
  • All Societies that maintain armies maintain the belief that some things are more valuable than life itself. Just What is so valued varies.
  • I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
  • "Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service."
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C

  • Hey, what are ya gonna do, nice college boy, eh? Didn't want to get mixed up in the family business huh? Now you wanna gun down a police captain. Why? Because he slapped you in the face a little bit? Hah? What do you think this is, the Army where you shoot 'em a mile away? You've gotta get up close like this and bada-bing! You blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit.
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D

  • A Serjeant is a soldier with a halbert, and a drummer is a soldier with a drum.
    • Thomas Denison, Lloyd v. Wooddall (1748), 1 Black. 30; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 15.
  • As a military professional, I knew that the most important element is trust- the vision had to be built on trust. The very basis for why soldiers fight the way they do is the trust they have in their teammates, their fellow soldiers. It's usually less dramatic off the battlefield but still equally important. Without trust in each other and trust in the institution, you will not be able to realize your vision.
  • I have to laugh when people ask, "How's retired life?" I'm as busy as I've ever been, except now I make my own schedule. I see my husband every day. I finally get to spend regular quality time with family and friends. I no longer miss milestone events such as baby showers, birthdays, graduations, and weddings. I wrote this book. I started a consulting company, First 2 Four, LLC. I serve on multiple boards. I even continue to give speeches at universities and corporate gatherings, despite my continued fear of public speaking. But nothing- absolutely nothing- can replace the pride and purpose of being a soldier.
  • Not everyone is cut out for the military, but I do believe everyone can and should have the opportunity to participate in a national service endeavor of their choice. Serving in the military can make you a better citizen, employee, and leader. The military provides hands-on experience. It provides leadership training and builds a foundation for a strong work ethic. Corporate America has taken notice and regularly recruits soldiers just as it does Ivy League students.
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E

  • She might have assumed that the fusion ships were doing something useful, but the media was full of talk of “military exercises,” which meant the Tirans and the Ghahari were engaging in expensive, belligerent gestures in orbit, trying to convince each other of their superior skills, technology, or sheer strength of numbers. For people with no real differences apart from a few centuries of recent history, they could puff up their minor political disputes into matters of the utmost solemnity. It might almost have been funny, if the idiots hadn’t incinerated hundreds of thousands of each other’s citizens every few decades, not to mention playing callous and often deadly games with the lives of the inhabitants of smaller nations.
  • In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
    • Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell radio and television address to the American people, Washington, D.C., January 17, 1961. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960–61, p. 1038.
  • Some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country.
    • Dwight D. Eisenhower, letter to Everett E. ("Swede") Hazlett, August 20, 1956.—William Bragg Ewald, Jr., Eisenhower the President, p. 248 (1981). Date of the letter provided by the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.
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G

  • The Cold War may well be remembered, then, as the point at which military strength, a defining characteristic of "power" itself for the past five centuries, ceased to be that. The Soviet Union collapsed, after all, with its military forces, even its nuclear capabilities, fully intact. The advance of technology, together with a culture of caution that transcended ideology, caused the nature of power itself to shift between 1945 and 1991: by the time the Cold War ended, the capacity to fight wars no longer guaranteed the influence of states, or even their continued existence, within the international system.
  • In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.
  • Like a plague, the mad spirit is sweeping the country, infesting the clearest heads and staunchest hearts with the deathly germ of militarism...militarism, the destroyer of youth, the raper of women, the annihilator of the best in the race, the very mower of life.
    • Emma Goldman Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter (1915)
  • The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.
  • Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all.
  • The U.S. military, unlike any other, maintains a doctrine of global power projection: that it should have the ability, through roughly 800 overseas military bases, to intervene with deadly force absolutely anywhere on the planet. In a way, though, land forces are secondary; at least since World War II, the key to U.S. military doctrine has always been a reliance on air power. The United States has fought no war in which it did not control the skies, and it has relied on aerial bombardment far more systematically than any other military-in its recent occupation of Iraq, for instance, even going so far as to bomb residential neighborhoods of cities ostensibly under its own control. The essence of U.S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours' notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together.
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H

  • There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
    • Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961), chapter 5, p. 46. A more succinct definition of Catch-22 comes from Jacob Brackman's review of the film, Catch-22: "If you're crazy, they have to take you out of combat, but the catch is you have to ask them, and if you're trying to get out of combat then you can't be crazy." Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald, eds., A Catch-22 Casebook (1973), p. 363. The review originally appeared in Esquire (September 1970).
  • A soldier of the civil authority must be taught not to kill men and to refuse to do so if he is commanded. ... If he is unwilling to comply, he must be rejected. A military commander ... must resign or be rejected. If a catechumen or a believer seeks to become a soldier, they must be rejected, for they have despised God.
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K

  • In 1806 the French under Napoleon had defeated the Prussians in a six-week campaign, trouncing them with such aplomb at the Battle of Jena that the philosopher Hegel had moved to celebrate Napoleon as the "world soul." In 1870 all signs indicated that the outcome would be otherwise. The French military ataché [Eugène Stoffel] in Berlin had recently made a chilling observation: "Prussia is not a country which has an army. Prussia is an army which has a country."
    • Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (2006) p. 275; citing S. C. Burchell, Upstart Empire: Paris During the Brilliant Years of Louis-Napoleon (1971) p. 321; see also Eugène Stoffel (Le Colonel Baron Stoffel), Rapports militaires écrits de Berlin (1871).
  • Dumb stupid animals to be used.
    • Henry Kissinger describing soldiers, as quoted in "The Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in chapter 14. Page 194 in the paperback version (1995). Google Books link

L

  • Little generals and painted gods raise armies to waste lives and goods and spoil the sacred earth.
  • Armies, the world over, destroy enemies' property when they can not use it; and even destroy their own to keep it from the enemy. Civilized belligerents do all in their power to help themselves, or hurt the enemy, except a few things regarded as barbarous or cruel. Among the exceptions are the massacre of vanquished foes, and non-combatants, male and female.
  • I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army.
    • Attributed to President Abraham Lincoln by General James B. Fry. Allen Thorndike Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1886), chapter 22, p. 393. This supposedly had been part of Lincoln's response to a young volunteer soldier who had come to Lincoln's office asking his help with a grievance. The story has been repeated in numerous books on Lincoln: Alexander K. McClure, "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories (1904), p. 162; Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1917), vol. 2, p. 153; and Caroline T. Harnsberger, The Lincoln Treasury (1950), p. 14.

M

  • The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason for his being. When he violates this sacred trust, he not only profanes his entire cult but threatens the very fabric of international society. The traditions of fighting men are long and honorable. They are based upon the noblest of human traits—sacrifice.
  • In the United States… a handful of corporations centralize decisions and responsibilities that are relevant for military and political as well as economic developments of global significance. For nowadays the military and the political cannot be separated from economic considerations of power. We now live not in an economic order or a political order, but in a political economy that is closely linked with military institutions and decisions. This is obvious in the repeated “oil crisis” in the Middle East, or in the relevance of Southeast Asia and African resources for the Western powers…
  • What the main drift of the twentieth century has revealed is that the economy has become concentrated and incorporated in the great hierarchies, the military has become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the entire economic structure; and moreover the economic and the military have become structurally and deeply interrelated, as the economy has become a seemingly permanent war economy; and military men and policies have increasingly penetrated the corporate economy.
  • For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money. It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based.
  • "Be a true patriot and don't forget: force should only be used in the service of right. Unarmed people deserve the respect of the Armed Forces... [...] A soldier cannot be a whistle-blower, unless it means saving the fatherland..."
  • Bento Moreira Lima. A Caixa Preta do Golpe de 64. Paulo de Mello Bastos.

O

  • It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the 'journalists' do the shouting, and no 'true patriot' ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.
  • War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
  • Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac. The essential job is to get people to recognise war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda.
    • George Orwell in his Review of The Men I Killed by Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, CB, CMG, DSO, in New Statesman and Nation (28 August 1937)

P

  • I threw families onto the street in Iraq, only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country, in this tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis. We need to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. They're not people whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable. It's the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable. It's the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not five thousand miles away. They are right here at home.

R

  • Everyone acknowledges that people come to the evidence with different preconceptions. But we can't go into these problems assuming that the civilian bias, which tends toward arms control, and the view that everyone is rational, is necessarily more appropriate than the military bias. That needs to be argued, not just assumed.
  • The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military’s motives.

S

  • Terrible as an army with banners.
    • Song of Solomon, VI. 4 and 10.

T

  • What other job lets you die for a living?

W

  • Enjoin this upon the Officers, and let them inculcate, and press home to the Soldiery, the Necessity of Order and Harmony among them, who are embark'd in one common Cause, and mutually contending for all that Freeman [sic] hold dear. I am persuaded, if the Officers will but exert themselves, these Animosities, this Disorder, will in a great Measure subside, and nothing being more essential to the Service than that it should, I am hopeful nothing on their Parts will be wanting to effect it.
    • George Washington, letter to Major General Philip Schuyler, July 17, 1776; reported in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, vol. 5 (1932), p. 290–91.
  • Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.
    • George Washington, general orders, July 6, 1777; reported in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, vol. 8 (1933), p. 359.
  • Really when I reflect upon the characters and attainments of some of the General Officers of this army, and consider that these are the persons on whom I am to rely to lead columns against the French Generals, and who are to carry my instructions into execution, I tremble; and, as Lord Chesterfield said of the Generals of his day, "I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names he trembles as I do."
    • Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Torrens, August 29, 1810.—Antony Brett-James, Wellington at War, 1794–1815, p. 199 (1961). Lord Chesterfield's comment is Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • [A]rmies are only expedients, necessary evils. They should be kept out of sight for the same reason I keep the guns out of sight in my home. A military parade does not display greatness—it displays power. And that may be where I most part company with our new nationalists.
  • The syndicalists fight against every form of militarism, which they see as a terrible threat to the physical and mental well-being of the people, which is in reality only a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes to protect the power of the propertied classes against the working class, harnessing power of the great majority of the people against the rebellion of the oppressed. For the workers of all lands, there is no benefit to be had from slaughtering one another, and it is only their ignorance which arranges for them to go to the wars which are the result of conflicts of interests between the capitalists of different States.

Author unknown

  • With willing hearts and skillful hands, the difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer.
    • Author unknown. Inscription on the memorial to the Seabees (U.S. Naval Construction Batallions), between Memorial Bridge and Arlington Cemetery. "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer." Motto of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, according to The Home Book of American Quotations, ed. Bruce Bohle, p. 35 (1967), which says that other branches of the service also used this slogan. Newsweek, March 8, 1943, p. 34, attributes this "cocky slogan" to the Army Air Forces. A higher comparative, "The impossible we do at once; the miraculous takes a little longer," was said to be the motto of the Army Service Forces. The New York Times (November 4, 1945), p. 2E, 6E. This echoes a remark attributed to Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, Louis XVI's minister of finance. Marie Antoinette asked him something in a tone that brooked no refusal, adding that perhaps it would be difficult. He replied, "If it is only difficult, it is done; if it is impossible, we shall see." J. F. Michaud, Biographie Universelle, vol. 6, p. 427.

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