Military Expenditure Quotes

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

Americans know that war must be paid for and it is they who must pay for it.

Spending on the military doesn't increase the deficit.

Action must begin in the developing world itself. These countries do not lack financial resources. What they lack is political courage. We need to ask the leaders of the Third World, and ask them bluntly, why they insist on spending $130 billion each year on the military when even a quarter of this expenditure can finance their entire essential social agenda. And we must ask them why they insist on having six soldiers for every one doctor when their people are dying of ordinary diseases, from internal disintegration, not from external aggression, from many threats to human security, not any threats to territorial security.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

The cost of deploying one U. S. soldier is the equivalent to the cost of deploying 70 Afghan soldiers.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

War is not popular politically because there is always a cost—a cost in people and a cost in money.

What chiefly governs the military budget is the need to spend enormous sums of money in a useless way. The allegedly powerful Pentagon is simply a receptacle for wasteful expenditure, just as a city dump is the receptacle for the refuse of a city.

The purchase of unnecessary military hardware is undoubtedly the most wasteful element in American government.

The Foreign Office is a very important arm of the British state and I think Britain has a fantastic diplomatic service. We are the only country in the world spending 2% of our national income on defence and 0.7% of our national income on aid. We are the only country in the world doing both of those things.

Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.

War is not cheap, but it's the human cost that's the highest.

The Pentagon is the Poster Child for waste in Government.

Fighting a war can cost more in blood and money than any other undertaking in which nations engage.

To maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.

Nations want the United States to fight their wars, until they go bad.

It's a fraction of the cost to prevent a war than prosecute a war.

Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

If we have political forces in the Bundestag, and in parts of the coalition, who... say they want to spend money on pensions, not weapons. Then I say, be honest and say you don't want a German army.

The military budget of the United States is becoming much like that of other government agencies—it is increasingly being devoted to pensions and health care.

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

An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.

You cannot stop me; I spend thirty thousand men a month.

It is not how much you spend on defense as much as how you spend it.