Our Military

Sunday, September 6, 2020 – Our Military

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. ~ George Orwell

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman. ~ George Santayana

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons. ~ Douglas MacArthur

Be an example to your men, in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself and let your troops see that you don’t in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide. ~ Erwin Rommel

Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either. ~ P. J. O’Rourke

Should we continue to spend billions to subsidize foreign military dictatorships, or should we concentrate on taking better care of the one we have right here at home? ~ Pat Paulsen

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. ~ John Adams

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ John Adams

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth. ~ George Washington

Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will. ~ James Monroe

The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. ~ James Madison

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory. ~ Douglas MacArthur

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. ~ Douglas MacArthur

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. ~ George S. Patton

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood. ~ George S. Patton

Americans play to win at all times. I wouldn’t give a hoot and hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor ever lose a war. ~ George S. Patton

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. ~ Norman Schwarzkopf

There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it. ~ Benito Mussolini

War is to man what maternity is to a woman. From a philosophical and doctrinal viewpoint, I do not believe in perpetual peace. ~ Benito Mussolini

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war. ~ Otto von Bismarck

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. ~ William Tecumseh Sherman

It is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it. ~ Robert E. Lee

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever. ~ Thomas A. Edison

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. ~ Carl Sagan

In nuclear war all men are cremated equal. ~ Dexter Gordon

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. ~ John Stuart Mill

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war. ~ Desiderius Erasmus

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies. ~ Lester B. Pearson

War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is fear cloaked in courage. ~ William Westmoreland

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. ~ Thomas Mann

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~ Voltaire

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him? ~ Blaise Pascal

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. ~ Winston Churchill

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism? ~ Howard Zinn

Next to a lost battle, nothing is so sad as a battle that has been won. ~ Arthur Wellesley

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons. ~ Herodotus

Only the dead have seen the end of the war. ~ George Santayana

War would end if the dead could return. ~ Stanley Baldwin

There has never been a just war, never an honorable one – on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful – as usual – will shout for the war. The pulpit will – warily and cautiously – object – at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.” Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers – as earlier – but do not dare say so. And now the whole nation – pulpit and all – will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. ~ Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

War is what happens when language fails. ~ Margaret Atwood

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. ~ Leo Tolstoy