Mikhail Kalashnikov Quotes

I have been struck by the pervasive frequency of pompously patriotic ads for the defense industry, usually accompanied by deferential salutations to our men and women who are heroically sacrificing their lives in our defense. Do we really need all of that for our security?

Our military doesn't defend our American people. Our military is the strong-arm muscle of corporations.

When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.

Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex and the damage it could do to society.

I don't think we should be in the business of proliferating arms sales just to protect our industrial base.

The manufacture of arms within the United States still invites the attention of the National Legislature. At a considerable expense to the public this manufacture has been brought to such a state of maturity as, with continued encouragement, will supersede the necessity of future importations from foreign countries.

Arsenal of Democracy

Will it be a great source of comfort to certain Canadian boys to know that the bullet that maimed them for life was made from Canadian nickel sold by the International Nickel Company?

We have been compelled to create an armaments industry of vast proportions.

If there is no Ukrainian strong army, there will be no Ukraine, and that will be the case when everyone will understand... it's not the war in Ukraine, it's the war in Europe. We are defending our country, our land. We are not attacking anyone, because that is immoral.

I have lived in the United States and I know the might of their industrial complex. The United States is a sleeping giant and I am afraid that our attack has awakened it.

Our obligation is to ourselves and obligating to ourselves the job of defending and protecting America is how we serve other people around the world, not by letting this country go to hell. We are under no such obligation.

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

The first murmurings from the liberal part of the U.S.A. that we were somehow in the wrong, brutal killers, bullying other countries; that we who put our lives on the line for our nation at the behest of our government should somehow be charged with murder for shooting our enemy.

My work is my life, and my life is my work. I invented this assault rifle to defend my country. Today, I am proud that it has become for many synonymous with liberty.

The United States builds weapons presumably secretly, and then it sells them to other countries. So the whole business of secrecy is kind of a fake issue because hardly anything technological remains a secret for very long.

My aim was to create armaments to protect the borders of my motherland. It is not my fault that the Kalashnikov became very well-known in the world; that it was used in many troubled places. I think the policies of these countries are to blame, not the designers. Man is born to protect his family, his children, his wife. But I want you to know that apart from armaments, I have written three books in which I try to educate our youth to show respect for their families, for old people, for history.

It is not unseemly for a man to die fighting in defense of his country.

If you wear clothing, and put out trash you are using up resources that others also need BUT I can pay attention and I can do better. That I know for sure about me, my soul needs to try or I can't lay my head down on my pillow at night and even hope to sleep.

If you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare for war, in a capitalist country, you have got to let business make money out of the process or business won't work.

Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. ... Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.

The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history... Our military men and women...were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters...?

Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag.

Millions of citizens are deeply disturbed that the military-industrial complex too often shapes national policy, but they do not want to be considered unpatriotic.

My patriotism and my conscience required me to support it and to engage in the debate over whether and how to fight it.