Mandatory Enlistment Quotes

I was going to get drafted, but I didn't really want to go into the Army.

The only way to have a volunteer army is to draft them.

Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man! Forced servitude, with the risk of death and serious injury as a price to live free, makes no sense.

That makes no sense for someone to say if they were drafted by their country, that they'd say no.

Conscription is the vitality of a nation, the purification of its morality, and the real foundations of all its habits

Once you're drafted there is no time to relax.

If you're so smart, let's see you get out of the Army.

There can be no army without men. Men can be had voluntarily or involuntarily. We have ceased to obtain them voluntarily: and to obtain them involuntarily, is the draft—the conscription.

Conscription is an impediment to achieving the forces Australia needs. It is an alibi for failing to give proper conditions to regular soldiers. We will abolish conscription forthwith. By abolishing it, Australia will achieve a better army, a better-paid army - and a better, united society.

If your sons must be torn from you by conscription, consign them to the care of God; but let there be no volunteers except for defensive war.

Congress have a right by the Constitution to raise regular armies, and no restraint is imposed on the exercise of it …. It would be absurd to suppose that Congress could not carry this power into effect otherwise than be accepting the voluntary service of individuals.

What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam war is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not.