Lawrence Korb Quotes

The cost of deploying one U. S. soldier is the equivalent to the cost of deploying 70 Afghan soldiers.

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

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

We disarm ourselves by making weapons so expensive.

Wars cost money.

The Pentagon has expended stupendous sums. Yet when it comes to promised results—–disorder curbed, democracy promoted, human rights advanced, terrorism suppressed—–the United States has precious little to show.

We cannot allow anything that's called 'national defense' to justify any and all spending. We need to be very, very careful that we don't overspend and say, 'Oh, that's defense,' when perhaps it isn't.

We pay for the navy, and we have no commerce for the navy to protect; we pay for the army, and we loathe and execrate the work upon which it has been engaged.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

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

Today, the US spends less on defense as a percentage of our economy than we did at any time since he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the world's only superpower, that is an invitation to very serious trouble.

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.

We are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq.

This war so far has cost us $125 billion and counting, because largely we decided to do it on our own, with only the United Kingdom as a paying, fully participating partner.

... when you have a draft you're more likely to go to war than if you have to pay for a volunteer army. A draft lowers the cost for the wealthy because the people who are important don't have their children going off and they're also not paying as much in taxes.

Americans know that war must be paid for and it is they who must pay for it.

[The] up-and-down pattern of [defense] spending over the last 18 years averages out to below zero percent real growth. In other words, if defense spending had followed a path of zero percent real growth, the U.S. probably could have obtained more defense for its dollar.

We can always find money for what the military wants.

No state, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.

There is no better constraint on the leader of a developing country than telling him that he has to pay cash for his weapons.

The public was entirely free of the great danger and expense of a standing army.

We can cut the Defense Department budget because we’ve got bombs running out of our ears.

How much do we really need for the defense of the United States of America? Only the defense to defend its shores? Well I suppose that the maximum for the defense of our shores is one billion dollars. So the rest of our defense budget relates to what we regard as our responsibilities as a world power.

In our town meetings, and in our school district meetings, wealthy and substantial men oppose the grant of $15 to a school library, and of $30 for both library and apparatus; while at West Point they spend $50 in a single lesson at target firing, and the government keeps a hundred horses, and grooms and blacksmiths to take care of them, as an indispensable part of the apparatus of the academy. The pupils of our Normal schools, who are preparing to become teachers, must maintain themselves; the cadets at the academy receive $28 a month, during their entire term, as a compensation for being educated at the public expense.

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