Military Burden Quotes

Our purpose [is] to invite the present-day civilization to cast aside the staggering burden of armament.

Those who start wars, never fight them, And those who fight wars, they never like them...

An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.

We lay a mortgage on every unborn child for a hundred and more years to come. Mortgage his brain, his brawn, and every pulse of his heart in order to pay the debt, to buy the material to slaughter the men of our country. And that is not all, the greatest crime of war is the crime against the unborn. Read what they are doing. They are calling out every man, every young man, and every virile man from seventeen to forty-five or fifty years old; they are calling them out. All the splendid scientific force and energy of the splendid virile manhood are being called out to be food for the cannon, and they are leaving behind the degenerate, defective imbecile, the unfit, the criminals, the diseased to be the fathers of children yet to be born.

Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen volunteer to protect and defend this country and all its citizens, and do so with honor, integrity and excellence. Our nation continually asks them to do more and more, with less and less.

No state, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.

I see NATO as a good thing to have - I look at the Ukraine situation and I say, so Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet we are doing all of the lifting, they're not doing anything.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

It still puts burden on some troops of ours who are there [in Afghanistan and Iraq] as advisors and facilitators.

America is militarily overstretched, politically polarized and financially indebted.

Long history of inept handling of men and inequitable distribution of the burden of military service should lead us to welcome and encourage moves to end the draft.

From birth, Pakistan was saddled with a huge army it could not pay for and plenty of monsters to destroy.

America must continue diplomacy, even as we continue the war, to expand the coalition of the willing to share the burden of war and to share the responsibility and the economic cost of rebuilding Iraq.

The mythology of the Reagan presidency is that he induced the collapse of the Soviet Union by luring it into unsustainable military spending and wars: should there come a point when we think about applying that lesson to ourselves?

In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.

Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.

Arguing as the Eugenists do, you could prove anything. For instance, I know families where the men for generations have been wounded or killed in action. The Battles of Indian fame are such a family. Let us argue about this like the Eugenists. When men are wounded they become defective; they are a great expense to the State for pensions and are no more good; when they are killed they can't fight any more and their widows and children have to be provided for. Al! this is a great burden to the country. Getting wounded or killed is undoubtedly a hereditary taint. Therefore we should breed our soldiers from stock which has never had anyone killed or wounded among its predecessors, and therefore may be certain not to get into any danger should war break out.'

The American people ask, and legitimately so, why should we carry the heavy burden to ensure international peace and stability. You also profit from it, so you should also take your share in the burden. That's Secretary Gates's message. I share that message.

We are today, in this country, convulsed by the situation in Iraq. It is an extraordinary crisis. It is taxing our men and women in uniform, and it is certainly taxing our resolve.

It would have been easier to fight alone with inadequate forces than to have to accept...responsibility for our ally's lack of fighting qualities and dubious loyalty.

Competition in armament, both land and naval, is not only a terrible burden upon the people, but I believe it to be one of the greatest menaces to the peace of the world.

It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.