Smedley Butler Quotes

Armament firms have been active in fomenting war scares and in persuading their own countries to increase their armaments.

The world is organised by the war economy and the war culture.

War is a racket. It always has been... A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

Take the profits out of war.

Endless money forms the sinews of war. Nervi belli pecunia infinita.

Show me who makes a profit from war, and I'll show you how to stop the war.

Like all wars, conflicts bring on great opportunities for business.

Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

For capitalism, war and peace are business and nothing but business.

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

I hated the draft, but at the same time, it's something that made every American take war seriously.

We must take the profit out of war.

The war industry people are very together; they know exactly what they want; they don't even have to talk to each other. The peace industry people are just intellectuals who are very critical of each other... Unless the peace industry is powerful, we're always going to have war. It is as simple as that.

The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

I came here as a practical man, to talk, not simply on the question of peace and war, but to treat another question which is of hardly less importance - the enormous and burdensome standing armaments which it is the practice of modern Governments to sustain in time of peace.

War and preparation for war is not a matter of national honor and national defense, but a matter of profit for the few.

Whenever there is talk of peace, there is anger in the military- industrial- political complex.

The merchants of death have provided jobs for centuries, but that's no reason to continue it.

No soldier starts a war—they only give their lives to it. Wars are started by you and me, by bankers and politicians, excitable women, newspaper editors, clergymen who are ex-pacifists, and Congressmen with vertebrae of putty.

... a caricature of Mr. Military Industrial Complex.

It is not armaments that cause war, but war that causes armaments.

Our world has sprouted a weird concept of security and a warped sense of morality. Weapons are sheltered like treasures and children are exposed to incineration

There is only one war I am interested in making—making war against the private munitions makers the world over.