Stafford Cripps Quotes

I succeeded in staying out of the military during the Vietnam War, and I would never assume the right to tell others to do a “duty” that I shirked.

The government will ... go on in the highly democratic method of conscripting American manhood for European slaughter.

I oppose registration for the draft... because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom.

As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.

They were terrified that we were going to become an anti-war kind of platform.

I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that.

I was involved in the anti-war movement.

And I think we created something incredible as a Democratic group, as a platform, as an effort to make a change in the country, and I think we did change this country. And I think we will continue to, and I know that my father is not going to stop fighting.

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.

On October 15, 1965, an estimated 70,000 people took part in large-scale anti-war demonstrations.

I was part of the draft resistance movement in LA where we did demonstrations at the draft centre and burned our cards and made a lot of trouble on campus.

Since we replaced the compulsory military draft with an all-volunteer force in 1973, our nation has been making decisions about wars without worry over who fights them. I sincerely believe that reinstating the draft would compel the American public to have a stake in the wars we fight as a nation.

I was part of the draft resistance movement in L.A. where we did demonstrations at the draft centre and burned our cards and made a lot of trouble on campus. I had a student classification and they said that anybody who'd taken part in these demonstrations would be reclassified and drafted. And that's when I went to Canada.

I was honestly willing to accept compulsory military service, provided that the voluntary system had first been tried out, and had failed to supply the men needed and who could still be spared from industry, and were numerically worth troubling about.

This system of military conscription … is not only inconsistent with the provisions and spirit of the Constitution, but also with all the principles of civil liberty.

If your sons must be torn from you by conscription, consign them to the care of God; but let there be no volunteers except for defensive war.

I am against war, and because I am against war I went to war to fight against war.

You ought to be made to fight. We need regiments of such men as you.

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly and wickedness of the government may engage itself? …. A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

My dad was a civil rights lawyer, and he was actually defending conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.

One of the things I am most proud of is refusing to serve in the military when drafted during the Vietnam War.

I've never understood why anyone would want to join the army, but that's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that, as long as we go on voting in governments who are prepared to take troops into an illegal war, that army is a necessity.

I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!

We had the Vietnam War in the '60s, and there was a draft. The students didn't believe in it, and it unified them.

The first step in having any successful war is getting people to fight it.