Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

… war is a matter not so much of arms as of money

For the first time in history, we declared war without financing it. Americans have not been asked to pay for it through taxes.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

Wars have been fought with borrowed money ever since Rome instituted the practice of forcing its richer citizens to loan the state money to help fund the conflict with Carthage in the third century BC.

It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.

We have sent our troops to war without paying for it. Now, we are bringing them home without saying how we are paying for it.

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

Our guns are not called upon to hurl huge projectiles each one of which costs as much as the construction of a happy home.

Endless money forms the sinews of war. Nervi belli pecunia infinita.

Were the expense of war to be defrayed always by a revenue raised within the year ... wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken

You have a situation in which the U.S. is fighting three unjust wars and wasting trillions of dollars in public funds, all the while draining money from important social services and public and higher education.

...The war (WWI) cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion. $39 billion was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits.

The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.

Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.

As fighting in Iraq intensifies, President Bush delivered his supplemental war budget to Congress. The money will cover 30 days of fighting, then we'll be sent one war every other month until we cancel our subscription.

We can no longer afford the war in Iraq. Our financial costs have already passed a third of a trillion dollars; the lifetime costs for this war, in both human and economic terms, will be borne by Americans for generations to come.

The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else - men, guns, ammunition.

These kids understood what is not immediately obvious; that they were going to pay the bills for tax cuts that had been passed today or in the last 4 years, and for the war in Iraq, because essentially we are borrowing money to do those things.

We have adopted a war ready—made, and taken upon ourselves its prosecution to the end. We are to furnish the bodies to fill trenches and the cash to defray its enormous expense.

There are no straight line projections of cost in a war.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this -- no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so

It is often easier to assemble armies than it is to assemble army revenues.

If we can spend over $3 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, surely we can find the money to meet the long-term needs of our people.

I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.