Edward Gibbon Quotes

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

In a democracy you get the army that the people are willing to pay for.

We disarm ourselves by making weapons so expensive.

I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.

It is not how much you spend on defense as much as how you spend it.

Japan is the only country in the world that does not call its defense organizations a military. That is absurd, when the government is spending 5 trillion yen a year for self-defense.

Avoid the necessity of those overgrown Military establishments, which under any form of Government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.

I regard a large standing army as an impossibility … because of the repugnance of our people toward a large standing force.

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

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

We increased expenses, particularly in two areas: the military. If I put somebody in harm's way, they're going to get the best, as far as I'm concerned.

The repose of nations cannot be secure without arms, armies cannot be maintained without pay, nor can the pay be produced without taxes

It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.

I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children.

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 Pentagon budget, like all government spending, is an expression of priorities.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

Well, no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defense, but that doesn't mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank check for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all.

I was able to promote a strong defense budget when it could have been cut a lot more severely.

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 a defense budget that's big enough to sustain an increase in the size of the Army.

Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.

It will be sufficient to point to the enormous burdens which armaments place on the economic, social, and intellectual resources of a nation, as well as on its budget and taxes.