Smedley Butler Quotes

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

Why don't those damn oil companies fly their own flags on their personal property-maybe a flag with a gas pump on it.

I selected an enormous Marine Corps emblem to be tattooed across my chest. It required several sittings and hurt me like the devil, but the finished product was worth the pain. I blazed triumphantly forth, a Marine from throat to waist. The emblem is still with me. Nothing on earth but skinning will remove it.

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.

No one told these American soldiers they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with US patents.

The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

We must take the profit out of war.

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

If only more of today's military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite's as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad

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.

War like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few. The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit.

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.

My interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home.

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.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits - ah! that is another matter - twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent - the sky is the limit.

Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.

It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country ... but the profits ... skyrocket ...

War is just a racket ... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.

Senate Doc. # 259. The 65th congress( ... The coal companies made between 100% and 7,856% on their capital stock during the war (to end all wars, WWI) ... The leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of saddles for the calvary. But there wasn't any calvary overseas!