James Burgh Quotes

The Army has become an insupportable burden to the nation; until the military are permanently deprived of their usurped power, it is vain to look for any real improvements in the civil administration.

For a country that cherishes civilian democracy, we have a surprising affinity for strong men in uniform.

No one will involve the army in political processes!

Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.

The Constitutional Convention debated whether America should even have a standing army. ... They worried that a powerful military could rival civilian government for power in our new country, and of course they worried that having a standing army around would create too much of a temptation to use it.

How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

... standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty ...

The fate of this government depends absolutely upon raising it above the state governments.

The litmus test of democracy is the subordination of military power to civilian authority …

Nothing ... ought to more guarded against in a free state than making the military power ... a body too distinct from the people.

History does not furnish a single instance of a government once established, voluntarily yielding up its powers to secure the rights and liberties of the people.

The army and the government needs a dictator.

Considering standing armies as dangerous to free governments in time of peace, I shall not seek to enlarge our present establishment, nor disregard that salutary lesson of political experience which teaches that the military should be held subordinate to the civil power.

It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.

By its nature, government is not subject to the profit-and-loss test, to the domination by the consumers, of the free market …. it need serve no one except itself. The only limit on government is the enormously wide one of people rising up to refuse to obey its orders (including taxes); short of such revolution, however, there is little to limit government or to check the entrenchment or burgeoning of its elite.

The military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

A military government may make a nation great, but it cannot make them free.

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.

The best way of preventing the army from confiscating power for itself and for itself alone is to make this power shared by the Voltaic people from the outset. That's what we are aiming for.

Standing armies are the oppressive instruments for governing the people.

The military belongs in its barracks, not our ballot boxes.

In recent years the military has gradually been eased out of political life in Turkey. The military budget is now subject to much more parliamentary scrutiny than before. The National Security Council, through which the military used to exercise influence over the government is now a purely consultative body. But Turkish society still sees the military as the guarantor of law and order. The army is trusted, held in high regard - though not by dissident liberals. When things go wrong, people expect the military to intervene, as they've intervened over and over again in Turkish history.

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

It has been observed, [that for the federal government] to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.