Ludwig Quidde Quotes

Wars are made to make debt.

Sound principles will not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate treasure for wars to happen we know not when, and which might not, perhaps, happen but from the temptations offered by that treasure.

The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.

I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.

Bottom line: A market approach to national defense would give us a lousy national defense.

I don't mind payin' for the police and for streets and sanitation, or road work, bridges, trains, food subsidies and welfare. But I don't wanna pay for bombs to fight proxy wars in the middle of nowhere against enemies in the night.

Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.

I've had this underlying need to go to a place and meet people who are on the other end of the portion of my tax money that goes to fund the U.S. and other militaries.

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.

When is the last time we had a tax cut before going to war?

Endless money forms the sinews of war. Nervi belli pecunia infinita.

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

If anything could revolt our citizens against the war, it would be the extravagance with which they are about to be taxed ….

They are all afraid to face high taxation to pay for the war. The rich won't stand it—and the poor can't stand it.

Being a great power is very expensive.

Wars cost money.

It is often easier to assemble armies than it is to assemble army revenues.

Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.

The mainstream of both the Republican and Democratic Parties are equally committed to militarism today.

In a democracy you get the army that the people are willing to pay for.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

Militarism is the most energy-intensive, entropic activity of humans, since it converts stored energy and materials directly into waste and destruction without any useful intervening fulfillment of basic human needs. Ironically, the net effect of military, as opposed to civilian, expenditures is to increase unemployment and inflation.

If somewhere is a deficiency the normal American answer would have been well then, let's spend some more money, build some more weapons and deploy them. That's the normal way of thinking of the military, in America not only but also all over the place, but America or Russia or other countries.

Global military spending levels constitute an unconscionable use of resources and remain at an all-time high, reaching a total of USD 1.75 trillion in 2012, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Can it be that a generation of school children is growing up heedless of the simple truth that the Pentagon's centrla role for many years has been to buy weapons that don't work, against threats that don't exist?