Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes

The world is organised by the war economy and the war culture.

War provides jobs, profits, political payoffs, research funds, and forms of political and economic power that reach into every aspect of society.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

You really can’t blame the military for wanting to go to war [in Iraq]. They’ve got all these new toys and they want to know whether they work or not.

Peace is costly to the profits of the military/security complex. Washington's gigantic military and security interests are far more powerful than the peace lobby.

To most of America, war has become not only tolerable but profitable, and so there is no longer any great incentive to end it.

When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective.... There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls the conscience. It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence.

The 'defense' budget is three quarters of a trillion dollars. Profits went up last year well over 25%. I guarantee you: when war becomes that profitable, we're going to see more of it.

All the vested interests and people who profit by war will - with the journals they control - resolutely oppose any reduction of armaments.

For capitalism, war and peace are business and nothing but business.

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.

Wars have economies. And I don't mean financial economies, although that's often part of it. Why do people continue fighting these wars? There are financial incentives.

War is a racket. It always has been... A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

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.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex and the damage it could do to society.

War is a racket.... The only way to stop it is by conscription of capital before conscription of the nation's manhood.... Let the officers and directors of our armament factories, our gun builders and munitions makers and shipbuilders all be conscripted—to get $30 a month, the same wage paid to our lads in the trenches. Give capital 30 days to think it over and you will learn by that time there will be no war. That will stop the racket—that, and nothing else.

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

The most expensive peace is far less costly than the cheapest war.

The military market is based on human folly, not normal market precepts. Human folly goes up and down, but it always exists. It's depths have never been plumbed.

... a caricature of Mr. Military Industrial Complex.

Show me who makes a profit from war, and I'll show you how to stop the war.

When the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer.

America must get off a permanent war footing.