Quotes & Sayings About Militarism

The very existence of armaments and great armies psychologically accustoms us to accept the philosophy of militarism. They inevitably increase fear and hate in the world. — Norman Thomas

In an ecological perspective, in other words, there are few accidents or anomalies, only outcomes based on system structure and dynamics. Climate change and glittering malls, Calcuttan poverty and sybaritic wealth, biotic impoverishment and economic growth, militarism and terrorism, global domination and utter vulnerability are not different things but manifestations of a single system. — David W. Orr

Men can, of course, be stirred into life by being dressed up in uniforms and made to blare out chants of war. It must be confessed that this is one way for men to break bread with comrades and to find what they are seeking, which is a sense of something universal, of self-fulfillment. But of this bread men die. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Women do not have to embrace principles of imperialism, corporatism and militarism in order to be a feminist. There is another feminist choice, which is consistent with the broader principles of feminism. — Jill Stein

Before we apply Joshua to our lives, we need to make sure which side of the Jordan we are living on. Militarism invites God's wrath. — Preston Sprinkle

It has been claimed that the aim of the present war is to end war. But war cannot end war, neither can militarism destroy militarism. — Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence

Inflationism, however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only one piece in the total framework of politico-economic and socio-philosophical ideas of our time. Just as the sound money policy of gold standard advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism, militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Watch every tendency towards militarism, for we know that preparation for war leads to war. — William Mulock

Like a cyclone, imperialism spins across the globe; militarism crushes peoples and sucks their blood like a vampire. — Karl Liebknecht

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

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. — Arundhati Roy

Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can. — Arthur Koestler

Spare the rod and spoil the Memorial Day rotisserie. — Brian Spellman

Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism — Martin Luther King Jr.

Hand in hand with nationalist economic isolationism, militarism struggles to maintain the sovereign state against the forward march of internationalism. — Christian Lous Lange

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It is high time that the American people should remember a few home truths, and that we should refuse to become partners with a militarism which is still stalking unchecked under the pretense of national needs and of international justice. — Elisabeth Marbury

Nationalism is blamed for this century's wars, but nationalism need not mean militarism. And the nation-state has been the laboratory of liberty. — George Will

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. — Emma Goldman

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. — P.J. Sullivan

A nations path to greatness lies in its economic prowess and that militarism, empire, and aggression lead to a dead end. — Fareed Zakaria

If there were any justice," said Shale, "one ought to be allowed to use ardent militarists for experiments in peacetime, if one uses pacifists in war. But I suppose they wouldn't volunteer. — Nigel Balchin

Should a woman keep her pants on in the streets or not? Shall she remove them, say, at the moment of going to church, for a more intimate reminder of her sexuality in relation to God? What difference does it make if that woman is a lemon vendor and sells you lemons in the streets without using underwear? Moreover, what difference would it make if she sits down to write theology without underwear? The Argentinian woman theologian and the lemon vendors may have some things in common and others not. In common, they have centuries of patriarchal oppression, in the Latin American mixture of clericalism, militarism and the authoritarianism of decency, that is, the sexual organisation of the public and private spaces of society. However, — Marcella Althaus-Reid

If the colonists hadn't rejected British militarism and the massive financial burden of maintaining the British military, America wouldn't exist. — Rachel Maddow

As the books got more and more Zionist and less and less socialist, my entire generation, at least a large percentage of it, simply left Judaism. We became Buddhist and Hindu and atheist or agnostic, all of which (except Christian) were more in keeping with peaceful self-transformative ideas that did not bow down to militarism. — Roseanne Barr

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? — Robert Jackson Bennett

Toynbee emphasized the difference between technological-material progress and true progress, which he defined as spiritualization. He recognized that the Western world was indeed undergoing a crisis, which he attributed to the abandonment of religion for the cult of technology, nationalism, and militarism. For him this crisis had a name: secularism. If you know the cause of an illness, you can also find a cure: The religious heritage in all its forms had to be reintroduced, especially the "heritage of Western Christianity." Rather than a biologistic vision, he offered a voluntaristic one focused on the energy of creative minorities and exceptional individuals. — Pope Benedict XVI

In Kant and Nietzsche we have the moralists of German militarism. — Thomas Mann

Earlier ages fortified themselves behind the sovereign state, behind protectionism and militarism. — Christian Lous Lange

The system of patriarchy is a historic construct; it has a beginning; it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course - it no longer serves the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth. What will come after, what kind of structure will be the foundation for alternate forms of social organization we cannot yet know. We are living in an age of unprecedented transformation. We are in the process of becoming. — Gerda Lerner

The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. — Emma Goldman

Military men are the scourges of the world. — Guy De Maupassant

Muscles without strength, friendship without trust, opinion without risk, change without aesthetics, age without values, food without nourishment, power without fairness, facts without rigor, degrees without erudition, militarism without fortitude, progress without civilization, complication without depth, fluency without content; these are the sins to remember. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Every award for me is important because it means a slap against militarism and fascism in Indonesia. — Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Militarism is basically a way of thinking, a certain interpretation of the function of the state; this manner of thinking is, moreover, revealed by its outer forms: by armaments and state organization. — Christian Lous Lange

We must have research for peace ... It would embrace the outstanding problems of morality. The time has come for man's intellect, his scientific method, to win over the immoral brutality and irrationality of war and militarism ... Now we are forced to eliminate from the world forever this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this curse to the human race. — Linus Pauling

Militarism is in direct competition with people's needs for food, health care, and environmental protection. — Petra Kelly

If you want peace, prepare for ideological war with those who want others to prepare for physical war. — Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

If everyone loves you, maybe you don't need so many tanks. — Craig Nelson

For the young Turks, soon to assume power and build a nation-state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Japan provided clear inspiration. These envious outside observers of Japan's progress did not see the extreme violence of the country's makeover. Nor did they notice the trends towards conformity, militarism and racism that were later to make Japan a ominously successful rival to Europe's imperialist nations- by 1942, Japan would occupy or dominate a broad swathe of the Asian mainland, from the Aleutian Islands in the north-east to the borders of India, after booting out almost all the European masters in between. For many Asians in the late nineteenth century, the proof of Japan's success lay in the extent to which it could demand equality with the West; and, here, the evidence was simply overwhelming for people who had tried to do the same and had failed miserably. — Pankaj Mishra

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war. — Albert Einstein

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. — Bertrand De Jouvenel

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across 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 know
It 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 all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore. — Charles Hamilton Sorley

We must begin to inculcate our children against militarism by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal it's horror. I would teach peace rather than war. — Albert Einstein

From a very young age, militarism and trying to solve the world's problems through militarism is something that has always resonated with me as being a bad idea. — Justin Sane

If you can't handle the answer, then don't ask the question. — T.A. Uner

Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviorism, racism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice. — Henry M. Morris

Afghanistan - where empires go to die. — Mike Malloy

Force is all conquering, but it's victories are short lived. — Abraham Lincoln

No movement for social change has ever succeeded without 'the militarism component' ... Thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out — Ingrid Newkirk

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? — Rob Nixon

The next worse thing to a battle lost is a battle won. — Simon Schama

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. — Dave Eggers

It was as if California, specifically the Bay Area, had most of what Nietzsche once defined as the 'precondition' of Buddhism: a very mild climate, very gentle and liberal customs, no militarism; and that it is the higher and even learned classes in which the movement has its home. The supreme goal is cheerfulness, stillness, absence of desire, and this goal is achieved.1 — Pankaj Mishra

Militarism is the most energy-intensive, entropic activity of humans, since it converts stored energy and materials directly into waste and destruction without any useful intervening fulfillment of basic human needs. Ironically, the net effect of military, as opposed to civilian, expenditures is to increase unemployment and inflation ... — Hazel Henderson

Where else could one find such a perfect combination of American values
racism, militarism, capitalism
all packaged in one 'ideal' symbol, a woman. — Robin Morgan

Our planet is blessed with vast natural treasures. If we use them wisely, beginning with the elimination of militarism and war, every human being will be able to live a healthy, prosperous existence. — Dalai Lama

In The Blank Slate I argued that the modern denial of the dark side of human nature - the doctrine of the Noble Savage - was a reaction against the romantic militarism, hydraulic theories of aggression, and glorification of struggle and strife that had been popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. — Steven Pinker

Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or any faith, shape and interpret religious thought to make it conform to and legitimize a conservative status quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism, racism, homophobia. They deny the unifying message of love that is at the heart of every major religious tradition. — Bell Hooks

He explained to Atro that he now understood why the army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness entered in. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The function of militarism is to kill. It cannot live except through murder. — Emma Goldman

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 you used them. — Dave Eggers

Your generation is suffering from what for lack of a better word I shall call over-debunk. There was a lot of debunking that had to be done, of course. Bigotry, militarism, nationalism, religious intolerance, hypocrisy, phonyness, all sorts of dangerous, ready-made, artificially preserved false values. But your generation and the generation before yours went too far with their debunking job. You went overboard. Over-debunk, that's what you did. It's moral overkill. It's like those insecticides Rachel Carson speaks of in her book, that poison everything, and kill all the nice, useful bugs as well as the bad ones, and in the end poison human beings as well. In the end, it poisons life itself, the very air we breathe. That's what you did, morally and intellectually speaking. Yours is a silent spring. You have overprotected yourselves. You are all no more than twenty, twenty-two years old, but yours is a silent spring, I'm telling you. Nothing sings for you any more. — Romain Gary

It is against this concept of the sovereign state, a state isolated by protectionism and militarism, that internationalism must now engage in decisive battle. — Christian Lous Lange

Democrat flaks jump on this like ducks on a June-bug, and in the process themselves reproduce the sick militarism of this culture that automatically valorizes anyone who wears a uniform. How dare you insult a soldier! Like its some sacred calling instead of an imperial employment program steeped in the culture of machismo and misogyny.(And you can gasp as theatrically as you want I spent more than two decades wearing a uniform that is exactly what it is.) — Stan Goff

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 to condemn terrorism, unless you change your attitude toward violence? — Arundhati Roy

I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple
evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. — Martin Luther

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism ... We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today and we are faced with the fierce urgency of now. — Martin Luther King Jr.

She (a woman politician) will be challenging a system that is still wedded to militarism and that saves billions of dollars a year by underpaying women and using them as a reserve cheap labor supply — Bella Abzug

Our young people will learn more about the cult of militarism in this short and accurate book by Joel Andreas than they might learn in their first twelve years of schooling. — Blase Bonpane

The paucity of near-future U.S. scifi is about the country becoming pessimistic, not being able to see the future clearly. There's a trend in U.S. scifi towards militarism and far-future stuff. — Charles Stross

Flacks for both war-obsessed governments immediately blamed the other side for the deaths of the civilians. — Colman McCarthy

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression - thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential. — Noam Chomsky

I support this proposal and agree with this great and important initiative to abolish militarism and war. I will continue to speak out for an end to the institution of militarism and war and for institutions built on international law and human rights and nonviolent conflict resolution. — Mairead Corrigan

The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors. Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline. — Ludwig Von Mises

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world. — Eugene V. Debs

Everywhere you go on the continent of Europe at this hour you see the conflict between militarism and industrialism. You see the expansion of industrial power pushed forward by the energy, hope, and thrift of men, and you see the development arrested, diverted, crippled, and defeated by measures which are dictated by military considerations. — William Graham Sumner

The human rainbow had been mutilated by machismo, racism, militarism and a lot of other isms, who have been terribly killing our greatness, our possible greatness, our possible beauty. — Eduardo Galeano

We were the unflinching prisoners of a grandiose make-believe, we who looked upon ourselves as heard-headed materialists. We dismissed the distress of today, the human wreckage scattered all about us, the terror and militarism prevailing in the country with the stereotyped belief that we were marching forward with great strides. — Jan Valtin

You cannot organize civilization around the core of militarism and at the same time expect reason to control human destinies. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

But wars - or the threat of war - at least put an end to American chattel slavery, Nazism, Fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism. It is hard to think of any democracy - Afghan, American, Athenian, contemporary German, Iraqi, Italian, Japanese, ancient Theban - that was not an outcome of armed struggle and war. — Victor Davis Hanson

Freedom from militarism will give the German people the opportunity, if they will but seize it, to apply their great energies and abilities to the works of peace. — James F. Byrnes

When I think of some of the great renewals in the church I think of folks like St. Francis and Clare of Assisi who, through their lifestyle, were challenging the patterns of materialism and militarism and it affected the Christianity of their age. — Shane Claiborne

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. — Alexis De Tocqueville

I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during 'God save the King'. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so 'enlightened' that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions. — George Orwell

To overcome of our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated. — Grigory Zinoviev

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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament. — David T. Dellinger

It seemed perverse to some, but for all their apparent militarism the Gzilt had remained peaceful over many millenia; it was the avowedly peaceful Culture that had , within living memory, taken part in an all-out galactic war against another civilisation. — Iain M. Banks

Most American view World War II nostalgically as the "good war," in which the United States and its allies triumphed over German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism. The rest of the world remembers it as the bloodiest war in human history. By the time it was over, more than 60 million people lay dead, including 27 million Russians, between 10 million and 20 million Chinese, 6 million Jews, 5.5 million Germans, 3 million non-Jewish Poles, 2.5 million Japanese, and 1.5 million Yugoslavs. Austria, Great Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and the United States each counted between 250,000 and 333,000 dead. — Oliver Stone

Alas, it has been hard for me to fit these ideas about fragility and antifragility within the current U.S. political discourse - that beastly two-fossil system. Most of the time, the Democratic side of the U.S. spectrum favors hyper-intervention, unconditional regulation, and large government, while the Republican side loves large corporations, unconditional deregulation, and militarism - both are the same to me here. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Only Americans can hurt America. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

If Germany won it would change the course of our civilization and make the United States a military nation [and] it would check his policy for a better international ethical code — Woodrow Wilson

But you invite ... "
"I invite a bit of military nonsense."
"That's what I ... "
"Duncan, I am a teacher. Remember that. By repetition, I impress the lesson."
"What lesson?"
"The ultimately suicidal nature of military foolishness. — Frank Herbert

Like George Sand, the feminism of the present day asserts the right of free thought against the creed of authority in every field; the solidarity of mankind and the cause of peace against the patriotism of militarism; social reform against the existing relations of society. — Ellen Key

Allowing Islamic Sharia law into the constitutions of the U.S-created Islamic (!) Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Iraq in 2004 and 2005 was as foolhardy as it would have been to write emperor-worship and Shinto militarism into Japan's 1946 constitution. — Robert Spencer

The U.S. has become the most egregious war-monger and terrorist nation in the world, as well as the long-time leading purveyor of weapons of war throughout the world, and because here at home, we have 50 million of our citizens living in poverty, one in four children surviving on Food Stamps, a collapsing education system, poor health care, and many other disasters, none of which can be addressed as long as the country keeps pouring trillions of dollars into war and militarism. This madness and criminality must end! — Dave Lindorff

Militarism ... is the chief bulwark of capitalism. When it is that militarism is undermined, capitalism will fail. — Helen Keller

Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue. — Emma Goldman