notable famous and military quotes

[shootnstarz]

"Never, in the history of human conflict, has one side's main battle weapon so outclassed it's opponent's as the M-1 did in WWII".

I think Patton said this too.

 

[fl57caveman]

"Never, in the history of human conflict, has one side's main battle weapon so outclassed it's opponent's as the M-1 did in WWII".

I think Patton said this too.

made the top 10 most effective weapons...



http://brainz.org/10-most-influential-weapons-history/

 

[Garpo]

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

William Tecumseh Sherman

 

[Knotnow]

The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.
George Washington

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
Abraham Lincoln

Fear is the foundation of most governments.
John Adams

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams

 

[Knotnow]

Here are a few more, although not military related:
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson


Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Mark Twain
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln


The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
Benjamin Franklin

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.
~John Quinton

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan
One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.
Ronald Reagan

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation. -
Will Rogers
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?
Will Rogers

 

[JohnAL]

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
Niccolò Machiavelli - circa. 1500

 

[fl57caveman]

ah...

Machiavelli


devious Italian to the 10power

 

[JohnAL]

Three pages of his quotes here:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/niccolo_machiavelli.html

 

[fl57caveman]

I like Sun Tsu quotes too....

 

[Ross7]

"God is on the side with the best artillery."
--Napoleon Bonaparte

 

[MAXman]

"Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl."
Frederick II of Prussia

 

[wildrider666]

Never confuse attemps with results. - Unknown

 

[MAXman]

Lower your standards, raise your average

 

[Hipower]

Heraclitus
"Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back."



"And don't forget: "Incoming fire has the right of way."

 

[IronBeard]

A few I've heard over the years that just sorta stuck:

Tracers work both ways

If you heard the explosion, you're still alive

It's all good until it's not

 

[fl57caveman]

Economist and author John Lott Jr. makes a shocking claim in his new book, “At the Brink.” According to Lott, President Barack Obama once told him that he doesn’t believe Americans should have the right to own guns. The stunning statement was purportedly uttered during a conversation the two had at the University of Chicago Law School in the 1990s.
The exact comment, as printed in the book is, “I don’t believe people should to be able to own guns.” The shocking claim is presented in the third chapter of the book, CNS News reports.

Lott, who worked at the university at the time, uses the text to recall conversations he once had with Obama on the subject of firearms. Additionally, the author explores the president’s policies, noting that he didn’t perceive the then-professor to be a moderate who was intent on bringing people together.

 

[Ric-san]

CHAPTER ONE

War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. 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.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and die -- only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit -- fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.

By Major General Smedley Butler

For those not familiar with Gen Smedly Butler, he is a twice awarded Medal of Honor Marine...he participated mostly in the Spanish-American War, The Boxer Rebelion, the Banana Wars etc all pre-WWII.

 

[fl57caveman]

_________________
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[fl57caveman]

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Abraham Maslow

 

[Ross7]

Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis (Retired)