Military quotes
4.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside military — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"When you innovate no one else can figure out how to do what you're doing because you're too far ahead of them. And the day they do figure out, you're on to the next object, the next widget, the next concept in innovation. And so America has benefited economically from the space race even though it was driven by military."
"Laws are inoperative in war"
"When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind."
"Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war."
"They have given their sons to the military services. They have stoked the furnaces and hurried the factory wheels. They have made the planes and welded the tanks. Riveted the ships and rolled the shells."
"There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!"
"We believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does... unless conquered from the outside by military force?"
"To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous."
"To place any dependence upon militia is assuredly resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life, unaccustomed to the din of arms, totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill ... makes them timid and ready to fly from their own shadows."
"Business, especially big business, is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say, a sort of mild militarism without bloodshed; as I say, a militarism without the military virtues."
"There had been a free and open election in Haiti in the early 1990s and president Jean-Bertrand Aristide won, a populist priest. A few months later came the expected military coup - a very vicious military junta took over, of which the United States was passively supportive. Not openly, of course, but Haitians started to flee from the terror and were sent back and on towards Guantanamo Bay. Of course, that is against International Law. But the United States pretended that they were "economic refugees.""
"Right now, where do we stand? Well right at the Russian border, both sides have been taking provocative actions, both sides are building up military forces. NATO forces are carrying out maneuvers hundreds of yards from the Russian border, the Russian jets are buzzing American jets. Anything could blow up in a minute."
"In Turkey also, for a long time, the military was the decisive force but in the past 10 years they have backed off somewhat and the civilian government has gained more independence and autonomy even to shake up the military command. In fact, it even arrested several high-ranking officers [for interfering in governmental affairs]. Maybe Pakistan can move in a similar direction."
"U.S. analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted reaction to the Bush administration's militancy and aggressiveness."
"The military has a huge role in the economy [of Pakistan] with big stakes and, as you say, it has constantly intervened to make sure that it keeps its hold on policy making. Well, I hope, and there seem to be some signs, that the military is taking a backseat, not really in the economy, but in some of the policy issues. If that can continue, which perhaps it will, this will be a positive development."
"Take a look at the Supreme Court decision that just authorized an effort by U.S. claimants against Iran for terrorist acts. What are the terrorist acts? The terrorist acts are bombings of U.S. military installations in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, which Iran is claimed to have something to do with. Well suppose they did. That's not terrorism. I mean if we have a military base in Lebanon that while we're shelling Lebanese naval ships, the Navy is shelling Lebanese installations and somebody attacks [that's not terrorism]."
"This soldiering thing sadly deadens that very good thing, humanity."
"Everyone's heard about the military-industrial complex, but they know very little about the medical-industrial complex...(in) a medical arms race."
"The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe."
"I believe that the United States has a moral obligation to stand up for those citizens of the world who cannot stand up for themselves, and I am proud to have authored the bill signed into law today that continues to put significant pressure on the brutal Burmese military junta."
