Thomas Reid Quotes

… war is a matter not so much of arms as of money

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

Wars cost money.

Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else - men, guns, ammunition.

We disarm ourselves by making weapons so expensive.

The cost of war is hard to count.

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

The Pentagon has expended stupendous sums. Yet when it comes to promised results—–disorder curbed, democracy promoted, human rights advanced, terrorism suppressed—–the United States has precious little to show.

It costs us $1 million for every troop[soldier] in Afghanistan.

We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns.

I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children.

We pay for the navy, and we have no commerce for the navy to protect; we pay for the army, and we loathe and execrate the work upon which it has been engaged.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

I came here as a practical man, to talk, not simply on the question of peace and war, but to treat another question which is of hardly less importance - the enormous and burdensome standing armaments which it is the practice of modern Governments to sustain in time of peace.

... when you have a draft you're more likely to go to war than if you have to pay for a volunteer army. A draft lowers the cost for the wealthy because the people who are important don't have their children going off and they're also not paying as much in taxes.

Development is a lot cheaper than soldiers.

We have adopted a war ready—made, and taken upon ourselves its prosecution to the end. We are to furnish the bodies to fill trenches and the cash to defray its enormous expense.

The sustaining populace, on whose behalf wars are prosecuted, must be sufficiently convinced that its cause is just, that its wars are winnable and that the costs are not disproportionate.

However overwhelming the victory of our navy, our commerce will suffer terribly. In war too, the first productive energies of the whole people have to be devoted to armaments. Cannon are a poor industrial exchange for cotton. We shall suffer a steady impoverishment as the character of our work exchanges. All this I felt so strongly that I cannot count the cause adequate which is to lead to this misery. So I have resigned.

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

The expenses of war are a moral check, which it has pleased the Almighty to impose upon the ambition and lust of conquest that are inherent in so many nations.

We can cut the Defense Department budget because we’ve got bombs running out of our ears.

I lament when I tell you, that neither arms, nor ammunition are provided for those brave men; no, not one musket to six men.... We are destitute of arms and ammunition; they are neither of them to be purchased in the country.

The bullet misses, the bayonet does not.