Military Industrial Complex Quotes

• This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Respect, Fear, Hate

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Military, Farewell, Government

  Farewell radio and television address to the American people, 17 Jan. 1961

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• Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Military, Debt, Emergencies

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson”, p.564, Penguin UK

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• Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, War, Farewell

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

  Smedley Butler

  Peace, War, Loss

  Smedley Butler, Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell (2015). “War is a Racket!: And Other Essential Reading”, p.5, The Forlorn Press

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• Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can complel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Wisdom, Peace, Freedom

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Farewell, Nwo, Acquisition

  Farewell radio and television address to the American people, 17 Jan. 1961

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• Millions of citizens are deeply disturbed that the military-industrial complex too often shapes national policy, but they do not want to be considered unpatriotic.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Military, Citizens, Shapes

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• President [ Dwight] Eisenhower warned us, five star general, he said watch out for the military-industrial complex. That's a threat to our freedom, to our economy, and what we have now is a gigantic taxpayer draining empire that is devouring itself, which, as you say, it's creating more resistance, more fighting, against us oversees.

  Ralph Nader

  Stars, Military, Fighting

  Source: www.cpa-connecticut.com

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• The people see that Wall Street is running our economic policy, that big oil is running our energy policy and the military industrial complex is determining our foreign policy.

  Alan Grayson

  Running, Wall, Military

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• Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Party, Law, Political

  Letter to Edgar Newton Eisenhower, teachingamericanhistory.org. November 08, 1954.

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• The merging of the military-industrial complex, surveillance state and unbridled corporate power points to the need for strategies that address what is specific about the current warfare and surveillance state and the neoliberal project and how different interests, modes of power, social relations, public pedagogies and economic configurations come together to shape its politics.

  Henry Giroux

  Military, Surveillance State, Together

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day

  John F. Kennedy

  Mean, Army, Night

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools* do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don't give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for military-industrial complex that needs manpower.

  Frank Zappa

  Military, School, People

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• We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Farewell, Democracy, Generations

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Military, War

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Strength, Military, America

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Military, Farewell, Responsibility

  Farewell radio and television address to the American people, 17 Jan. 1961

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• It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control.

  Ron Paul

  Country, Military, Mistake

  Television interview, 1987.

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• I am concerned that many young people in the Hemisphere seem to envision the United States as a nation intoxicated by power, addicted to warfare, controlled by a military-industrial complex, and determined to preserve the status quo, that we are against rapid economic and social growth.

  Luis A. Ferre

  Military, People, Growth

  National Governors Association Annual Meeting NGA, 1971.

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• As regards Hillary C;inton's foreign policy actions and the powerful vested interests she seems gleefully beholden to, including all the biggest players in the military-industrial complex, I feel that she would be no better an actor on the world stage than Trump and whatever coalition of managers he might cobble together.

  Viggo Mortensen

  Powerful, Military, Player

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• No president, not the smartest, best human being in the world can do it alone. You cannot take on this, the power that is in Washington, to billionaires and lobbyist, the military industrial complex, all of this money and power, you can`t do it. You need a mass movement of American who are looking in congress and we say directly.

  Bernie Sanders

  Military, President, Lobbyists

  Source: www.cpa-connecticut.com

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• Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Science, Discovery, Opposites

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.

  Henry Rollins

  Military, Kids, Criminals

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• Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union-busting, race baiting, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, who cut rich people's taxes in half, had a incurable case of the military-industrial complex, and said Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom. Both sides really should stop pretending he was something other than the man most responsible for our decline.

  Bill Maher

  Military, Cutting, Gay

  "Maher: Reagan wrote GOP playbook" by Hadas Gold, www.politico.com. June 8, 2013.

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