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Militarism
If our civilization is destroyed, it will not be by barbarians from below. Our barbarians come from above.
Henry Demarest Lloyd, American journalist (1847-1903)
When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there.
George W Bush
I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism
Martin Luther King
The United States has much to offer the third world war.
Ronald Reagan in a speech, on what the United States had to offer the Third World. He repeated this error nine times in the same speech.
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
Groucho Marx
Undrar hur många vapen det finns i världen bara för att man är rädda för varandra? Kanske alla vapen.
Bamse
Hittills har mänsklighetens historia endast varit en fortgående och blodig slakt av miljoner av fattiga mänskliga varelser till äran av någon obarmhärtig abstraktion - gud, land, stat, nationell ära, historiska rättigheter, juridiska rättigheter och politisk frihet
Mikhail Bakunin
This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein on the military system
Utan girighet funnes ingen anledning till militarisering.
Mahatma Gandhi
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
George McGovern
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tom Lehrer
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed - those who are cold and 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil... to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
General Douglas MacArthur 1957
The United States spends more on arms annually, $275 billion presently, than the rest of the Security Council combined. U.S. arms expenditures are approximately 25 times the gross national product of Iraq. The U.S. has in its stockpiles more nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, more aircraft, rockets and delivery systems in number and sophistication than the rest of the world combined. Included are twenty commissioned Trident II nuclear submarines any one of which could destroy Europe.
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, November 1998
What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?
Jose Saramago
I don't think the American public wants to be bothered with the what, when, and how of lasers in space and things like that. Whether the technology will work or how much it will cost — these are peripheral arguments.
Rick Sellers, executive director of the Coalition for the SDI
And guns only do one thing, you know... They don't feed people, they don't put people at houses, they don't give them jobs in the third world. Guns kill people.
Little Steven
This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism - how intensely I despise them!
Albert Einstein
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil ... to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
General Douglas MacArthur, speaking of large Pentagon budgets, 1957
Krigsvetenskap leder till sann och oförfalskad diktatur. Det är en ynklig demokrati som är beroende av militär hjälp för att kunna existera. Militär styrka hindrar sinnets fria växt. Den kväver människans själ.
Mahatma Gandhi 1946
När börsen på Wall Street öppnade igen efter förstörelsen av World Trade Center var de få företag vars aktier steg i värde vapentillverkarna Alliant Tech Systems, Northrop Gruman, Ray-theon och Lockheed Martin. Aktievärdet för Lockheed Martin, den amerikanska militärens största leverantör, steg med svindlande 30 procent.
John Pilger i Aftonbladet 020204
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
Bob Dylan, "Masters of war"
...they're on the list, their time will come, there's no question about it. They have a blood debt to us...
Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State
If we maintain our faith in God, our love of freedom, and superior global air power, I think we can look to the future with confidence.
General Curtis LeMay, in a speech given at Notre Dame's Washington's Birthday exercises, February 1956
I striden mot en ponerad yttre fiende, försummar vi den verkliga fienden inuti.
Mahatma Gandhi
The basic purpose of the U.S. Army is to kill Russians.
General John Crosby 1982
The military is also a danger to its own ranks. Enlisted personnel are regularly killed in vehicular accidents, firing exercises, flight crashes, ship fires, and parachute jumps - resulting in 20,269 non-combat deaths from 1979 to 1988, or an average of 2,027 a year. In addition are the several hundred suicides that occur yearly in the armed services.
Michael Parenti on the US military
For 50 years, we equipped our football team, practiced five days a week and never played a game. We had a clear enemy with demonstrable qualities, and we had scouted them out. [Now] we will have to practice day in and day out without knowing anything about the other team. We won't have his playhook, we won't know where the stadium is, or how many guys he will have on the field. That is very distressing to the military establishment, especially when you are trying to justify the existence of your organization and your systems.
Col. Dennis Long, director of "total armor force readiness" at Fort Knox, 1992
[Kanoner] är alldeles för farliga leksaker för generaler!
Bamse
Kriget är för mannen vad moderskapet är för kvinnan.
Benito Mussolini
The efficiency of the truly national leader consists mainly of preventing the people's attention from becoming divided,
and of always concentrating it on a single enemy.
Adolf Hitler
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
George Washington
This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there ... If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.
Richard Perle, advisor to president George W Bush, about the war against terrorism
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 Eisenhower, U.S. President and former U.S. Army general, 1961
The fact that some elements (of the U.S. government) may appear to be potentially "out of control" can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers.
...
That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries... It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed...
U.S. Strategic Command 1995
Efter att ha sett Rambo i går kväll vet jag vad jag ska göra nästa gång något sådant här händer.
Ronald Reagan efter ett libanesiskt gisslandrama.
I could never believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.
Richard Rumbold, English soldier
It is necessary for technical reasons that these warheads should be stored with the top at the bottom, and the bottom at the top. In order that there may be no doubt as to which is the top and which is the bottom, for storage purposes, it will be seen that the bottom of each head has been labeled with the word TOP.
British Admiralty instruction dealing tuith the storage of warheads and torpedoes
Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within he minds of an adversary's decision makers. This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries.
A US Strategic Command internal study from 1995, "Essentials of Post-Cold Deterrence", brought to light in 1998
Even with all their bombers and tanks, they must have sensed they were on the wrong side of history.
Nelson Mandela, on the National Party in South Africa
Medan småstater alltid fruktar att bli offer för de starkas övergrepp gäller supermaktens oro att den västliga, liberala civilisationen bara skyddas genom Amerikas styrka.
Per Ahlmark om varför USA har byggt upp en så stark militärapparat
I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villains. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.
Colin Powell, U.S. General
Det är rätt otrevliga grejer
Presstalesman för Saab Bofors Dynamics om pansarvärnsvapnet Carl-Gustaf, 2003
War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
Georges Clemenceau
Vi behöver inte oroa oss för att någon galning utlöser tredje världskriget. Det kommer att vara en klok och intelligent människa i ledande position som i ett varmt och mänskligt tal till världen lugnt berättar att han tyvärr inte ser någon annan realistisk lösning, samtidigt som han djupt beklagar detta.
Thomas Merton
If only more of today's military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite's as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad
Smedley Butler
The military is a role model for the business world.
Robert Dilenschneider
Folkets armé bör bereda sig på fullt krig och folket bör älska gevär.
Nyårsbudskap 1998/99 från de styrande till Nordkoreas folk
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable loce-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein
This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it, as I must master my life. Without me my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will. Before God I swear this creed. My rifle and myself are defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviours of my life. So be it .. . until there is no enemy ... but peace. Amen.
Kvällsbön ur filmen Full Metal Jacket
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room.
ur filmen Dr Strangelove
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