John Amery Quotes

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

Both Republicans and Democrats want to use our children as cannon fodder in order to police the world.

… once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.

People, and not only Americans, are losing their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers for no other reason than the profits of US armaments corporations, and the gullible American people seem proud of it. Those ribbon decals on their cars, SUVs and monster trucks proclaim their naive loyalty to the armaments industries and to the whores in Washington who promote wars.

It is a matter of common knowledge that the government of South Carolina is under domination of a small ring of cunning, conniving men.

We first fought... in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.

War is big business. It's a lot of money going to and fro, and unfortunately a lot of angst, and a lot of fear, and a lot of doubt. And eventually a lot of wonderful people, like soldiers, like men and women that are out there trying to do the best they can, they come back being wounded on many levels.

All wars are planned by old men in council rooms apart.

I don't feel a lack of hope. It's just disappointment that after all these years we're still fighting meaningless wars for a handful of people.

We decided to act carefully, concealing our aims, because if the movement were frankly revolutionary it would not be supported by the general mass of people... Since the natives are indifferent to the word liberty it is necessary to make them believe that the rising is undertaken simply to favor King Ferdinand.

Foreign policy can be the undoing of absolute rulers, tempted to foreign adventure in order to compensate for failure at home or spurred on by domestic adulation.

The Mexican war was a political war, and the administration conducting it desired to make party capital out of it.

The pinning on of stars reaches its full cynical significance when sanctified valor and bereaved families are used to lend dignity to wars stupidly fought. The courageous and their families are drawn into a circular trap. The sacrificed soldier was valorous under the orders of a commander who has rewarded his effort. The battle was therefore worth fighting. Courage made it worthwhile. The basic rule of war - that it is fought to be won --- has been forgotten.

No one should let the draft registration figures cause him to believe that the war is becoming popular ... They registered because the law makes it a crime not to register. ... Why should we permit our boys to be killed and maimed by the hundreds of thousands to protect the British commercial interest or because English profiteers make money out of this war?

Capitalist wars for capitalist conquest and capitalist plunder must be fought by the capitalists themselves so far as I am concerned.

The causes of war are the same as the causes of competition among individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride; the desire for food, land, materials, fuels, mastery. The state has our instincts without our restraints.

You believe you are dying for the fatherland—you die for some industrialist.

He has signed an agreement to bind us to fight in every future world-war. He has entered into a treaty that is without a parallel in all history as a spoils-grabbing compact of greed and hate.

… ‘great men’, will dally with all rights, in order to smuggle a fortune at ‘one fell swoop’; mortgage Texas, possess Oregon, and claim all the unsettled regions of the world for hunting and trapping; and should an humble, honest man, red, black, or white, exhibit a better title, these gentry have only to clothe the judge with richer ermine, and spangle the lawyer's finger with finer rings, to have the judgment of his peers, and the honor of his lords as a pattern of honesty, virtue, and humanity, while the motto hangs on his nation's escutcheon: ‘Every man has his price!’ …. reform this nation.

The ostensible causes of war among the Indians were like many of those of civilized nations; controversies about limits, violations of the rights of embassy, individual or national wrongs: And the real and latent reasons were generally the same; the enlargement of territory, the extension of dominion, the gratification of cupidity, and the acquisition of glory.

You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.