War Debt Quotes

Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.

When I was a youngster growing up in South Dakota, we never referred to the national debt, it was always referred to as the war debt because it stemmed from World War I.

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.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this -- no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

Wars have been fought with borrowed money ever since Rome instituted the practice of forcing its richer citizens to loan the state money to help fund the conflict with Carthage in the third century BC.

We and our allies owe and acknowledge an ever-lasting debt of gratitude to the armies and people of the Soviet Union.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

Besides, we had a large debt, contracted at home and abroad in our War of Independence; therefore the great power of taxation was conferred upon this Government.

As far as I know, we have never before decided to fight a war with borrowed money and ask generations that come after us to pay for it.

The fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war [with France] … you owe this to America

When Germany was defeated in 1918, the Armistice was granted upon the understanding that Germany would be required to pay for the damage sustained by the civilian populations in the victorious countries. The ascertainment of the amount of that damage was of course extraordinarily difficult …. political embarrassments would have been encountered in fixing the precise amount, for passions were running so high that any indemnity within the bounds of reason would have been too low to satisfy popular expectations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all.

For the first time in history, we declared war without financing it. Americans have not been asked to pay for it through taxes.

The Germans, if this Government is returned are going to pay every penny; they are going to be squeezed as lemon is squeezed – until the pips squeak. My only doubt is not whether we can squeeze hard enough, but whether there is enough juice.

We borrowed money to fight the Revolutionary War, and so there was a debt owed. We paid it. If we have done that for 235 years, if we have done it ever since this country has existed, we can do it again.

The young patriots now returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other deployments worldwide are joining the ranks of veterans to whom America owes an immense debt of gratitude.

Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.

It’s over 800 billion dollars that we have expended [in Iraq]. I believe that Iraq should pay us back for the money that we spent, and I believe that Iraq should pay the families that lost a loved one several million dollars per life, I think at minimum.

Gad, sir, Lord Beaverbrook is right! A conference should be held at once for the U. S. A. to pay back the money Europe owes her.

I will never forget the debt we owe to those who have fought to keep America safe.

When you authorised Congress to borrow money, and to contract debts, for carrying on the late war, you could not intend to abridge them of the means of paying their engagements, made on your account. You may observe that their future power is confined to provide common defence and general welfare of the United States. If they apply money to any other purposes, they exceed their powers. The people of the United States who pay, are to be judges how far their money is properly applied.

There is fear as to whether Japan, reduced to such a predicament, could ever manage to pay reparations to certain designated Allied Powers without shifting the burden upon the other Allied Powers.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

In Iraq, I listened to David Petraeus speak every day about how we had to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure and protect it. But, if we're going to go trillions of dollars in debt over Iraq, why can't we go billions of dollars in debt and make every single coal-producing plant clean in West Virginia?

Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid.