Edward Atkinson Quotes

I was drafted when I was 17, and I spent two years, and I lost a friend in war.

The draft is the corollary of militarism and militarism spells death to democracy.

I have great difficulty in finding a good reason for telling boys eighteen years old they should not go in the Army. I presume this is because I think there is nothing more important in the world than to win this war [World War II], because if we don't win it there won't be any schools to go to.

I do not want to send anybody else's child to war.

A nation's youths shouldn't be sent off to die.

I was kind of confused. I thought, Well, if I get drafted, I'll go. Everybody was very concerned with it. I had friends who went. Some that came back and some that didn't.

Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.

There's a lot of people that fought for their country and that's not something to be taken lightly. They gave their life, everything they had, they gave their lives, to give us what we have. That's why I'm so passionate about my beliefs - because someone died.

Sending our youth to war is wrong.

I am the living death, a Memorial Day on wheels. I am your Yankee Doodle Dandy, your John Wayne come home, your Fourth of July firecracker exploding in the grave.

I'll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.

I think it's very uncomfortable for people to talk to children about war, and so they don't because it's easier not to. But then you have young people at eighteen who are enlisting in the army, and they really don't have the slightest idea what they're getting into.

When it came time to go to the University, it was during the war.

I've been extremely lucky having been in the army when I was a boy of fourteen.

If NATO troops will come with ground forces, I will be the first volunteer in the Yugoslav army to defend my country, my family, my children.

Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people—and kill them.

They refused to be servants of kings, and were never ruled by any. But when they were called on for help in war, they responded gladly.

The habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy will not be allowed. Persons committing such offenses will be arrested with a view toward being tried, or sent beyond our lines to the lines of our friends.

You are fit for something better than ... cannon fodder.

All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore conscript the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulations, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.

... we might better reexamine the reasons for entering the war than abolish volunteers and substitute for them men dragged into the ranks by draft.

Remember that everybody signed up as fast as they could in World War I because they thought the war would be over by Christmas.

The century that just ended was the bloodiest ever recorded. Enormous sacrifices were required of our youth to preserve our free way of life. But because they were willing to make those sacrifices, our survival as a nation and as a free people is no longer threatened. Democracy and private enterprise, though not without their faults, have prevailed over the collectivist ideologies that threatened us with destruction.

The free negroes who have served faithfully in the army … may be re-enlisted therein, but no others