Military

This page is for quotations related to the armed forces and military matters.

Quotes

• "Don’t ask, don’t tell" does nothing but deprive the military of talent it needs and invade the privacy of gay service members just trying to do their jobs and live their lives. Political and military leaders who support the current law may believe that homosexual soldiers threaten unit cohesion and military readiness, but the real damage is caused by denying enlistment to patriotic Americans and wrenching qualified individuals out of effective military units. This does not serve the military or the nation well.
  • Stephen Benjamin, former U.S. Navy Petty Office 2nd Class
  • Quoted in "Don't Ask, Don't Translate", The New York Times, June 8, 2007

• Brauchler needs to realize that not every sailor is gay, and not every gay man wears loafers. Sometimes we wear combat boots and carry an M-16.
  • Stephen Benjamin
  • Quoted in "Fit for service? Please, don't ask", The Denver Post, July 25, 2007

• The British army has fought for the establishment of our nation, and on all these occasions it is known that the discipline which exists in that army has not destroyed its spirit. It is, thank God, what it was, still; and they will meet again with the same spirit when called on on a future occasion, and I hope and trust, whether men mean it or not, no man will be able to render a British soldier other than he is, one of the most respectable.
  • Best, J., King v. Burdett (1820), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 55; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 15.

• All Societies that maintain armies maintain the belief that some things are more valuable than life itself. Just What is so valued varies.
  • Michael Billig, in Banal Nationalism (1995) Introduction

• A Serjeant is a soldier with a halbert, and a drummer is a soldier with a drum.
  • Denison, J., Lloyd v. Wooddall (1748), 1 Black. 30; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 15.

• In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.
  • Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II, Chapter XVII

• "dumb stupid animals to be used" an opinion attributed to Kissinger by Haig in reference to military men and foreign policy.
  • Henry Kissinger, as quoted in "The Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in chapter 14. Page 194 in the paperback version (1995). Google Books link

• In the United States… a handful of corporations centralize decisions and responsibilities that are relevant for military and political as well as economic developments of global significance. For nowadays the military and the political cannot be separated from economic considerations of power. We now live not in an economic order or a political order, but in a political economy that is closely linked with military institutions and decisions. This is obvious in the repeated “oil crisis” in the Middle East, or in the relevance of Southeast Asia and African resources for the Western powers…
  • C. Wright Mills, Character & Social Structure (1954).

• What the main drift of the twentieth century has revealed is that the economy has become concentrated and incorporated in the great hierarchies, the military has become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the entire economic structure; and moreover the economic and the military have become structurally and deeply interrelated, as the economy has become a seemingly permanent war economy; and military men and policies have increasingly penetrated the corporate economy.
  • C. Wright Mills ,w:The Power Elite (1956).

• For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money. It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based.
  • C. Wright Mills , The Causes of World War Three (1958).

• Everyone acknowledges that people come to the evidence with different preconceptions. But we can't go into these problems assuming that the civilian bias, which tends toward arms control, and the view that everyone is rational, is necessarily more appropriate than the military bias. That needs to be argued, not just assumed.
  • Mark Riebling, "Rumsfeld's New Spy Unit," Broadcast on National Public Radio (October 31, 2002). Full transcript online

• Every time the Secretary of Defense tries to get a hand on his many intelligence programs, we hear warnings about the dire consequences to liberty. When you look behind those warnings, what you really see is the CIA trying to preserve its perks.
  • Mark Riebling, "Rumsfeld's New Spy Unit," Broadcast on National Public Radio (October 31, 2002). Full transcript online

• The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military’s motives.
  • Mark Riebling, "Rumsfeld's New Spy Unit," Broadcast on National Public Radio (October 31, 2002). Full transcript online