War Economy Quotes

It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.

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

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

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

Were the expense of war to be defrayed always by a revenue raised within the year ... wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken

Defeat [in World War II] was better for the nation than if we had become extremely militaristic as a result of victory.

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

The best way to revitalize the economy is war, and the U.S. has grown stronger [economically] with war.

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

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

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.

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.

America must get off a permanent war footing.

We have been compelled to create an armaments industry of vast proportions.

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

Our nation has moved from the cold war to the trade war.

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

Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.

If you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare for war, in a capitalist country, you have got to let business make money out of the process or business won't work.

In 1945, at the beginning of the Cold War, our leaders led us astray. We need to think of the Cold War as an aberration, a wrong turn. As such, we need to go back to where we were in 1945 - before we took the road to a permanent war economy, a national security state and a foreign policy based on unilateralism and cowboy triumphalism.

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

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

Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.

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