Simone Weil Quotes

I have a premonition which sounds like utter folly, and yet it will not leave me: the military state will become one vast factory.

Militarism is basically a way of thinking, a certain interpretation of the function of the state; this manner of thinking is, moreover, revealed by its outer forms: by armaments and state organization.

No state is free from militarism, which is inherent in the very concept of the sovereign state. There are merely differences of degree in the militarism of states.

I have been struck by the pervasive frequency of pompously patriotic ads for the defense industry, usually accompanied by deferential salutations to our men and women who are heroically sacrificing their lives in our defense. Do we really need all of that for our security?

I believe that the military-industrial complex is more important than ever. This is because the war in Kosovo gave fresh impetus not to the military-industrial complex but to the military-scientific complex. You can see this in China.

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

With the shock of war the state comes into its own again.

...The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.

Our military doesn't defend our American people. Our military is the strong-arm muscle of corporations.

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

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

In 1945, at the beginning of the Cold War, our leaders led us astray. We need to think of the Cold War as an aberration, a wrong turn. As such, we need to go back to where we were in 1945 - before we took the road to a permanent war economy, a national security state and a foreign policy based on unilateralism and cowboy triumphalism.

Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex and the damage it could do to society.

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

Militarism is, as all International Congresses have declared, the natural and unavoidable result of the capitalist regime, based on the class struggle, and that this militarism cannot be abolished without abolishing its source, the capitalist regime

Standing armies, in the time of peace, are dangerous to liberty

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.

We have been compelled to create an armaments industry of vast proportions.

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

The perfect fascist state needs to operate in conditions of perpetual warfare. Have you ever noticed how the world has been in constant crisis since World War II?

And war is wonderful, isn't it? For it's war, isn't it, that the Americans have been preparing for and are preparing for this way step by step. In order to defend this senseless manufacture from all competition that could not fail to arise on all sides.

War is one of the nation's most honored virtues, and its militaristic values now bear down on almost every aspect of American life.

Militarism. . . is the chief bulwark of capitalism. When it is that militarism is undermined, capitalism will fail.

Within the United States especially, the often violent response to nonviolent forms of youth protests must be analyzed within the framework of a mammoth military-industrial state and its commitment to war and the militarization of the entire society.

A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.