Top 88 Smedley Quotes
#1. I have no country...my countrymen are the men and women who work against oppression- it does not matter where they are. With them I feel at home- we understand each other. Others are foreign to me." -Agnes Smedley in Daughter of Earth
Agnes Smedley
#2. I follow the teachings of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps. He won two Congressional Medals of Honor, and he wrote the highly controversial antiwar book 'War is a Racket.'
Jesse Ventura
#3. During a mock battle attended by President Warren Harding in 1921, Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler exhumed the arm [of Stonewall Jackson; he didn't believe it was buried there] and reburied it in a metal box.
Tony Horwitz
#4. One of the loveliest things about being grown up is the knowledge that never again will I have to go through the miserable business of performing in Mrs. Smedley's Annual Piano Recital at McKinleyville's First Presbyterian Church.
Peg Bracken
#5. Agnes Smedley also knows what the century knows: that we become what is done to us.
Vivian Gornick
#6. Magnus's eyes went back to Alec. They were gold-green, as unreadable as the eyes of the cat he held on his lap. "Not my favorite topic, Smedley."
"Simon", said Simon. "If I'm going to die for you all, the least you could do is remember my name.
Cassandra Clare
#7. The war (WWI) cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion. $39 billion was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits.
Smedley Butler
#9. 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.
Smedley Butler
#10. I think it's a good idea to always question authority, but don't judge, have empathy towards your fellow man.
Bobby Blaze Smedley
#11. 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.
Smedley Butler
#12. The contrast between good and evil fades by diluting the essence of one or the other.
Craig Smedley
#13. I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
Agnes Smedley
#14. If a raindrop that falls into the ocean viewed itself as man views himself, the raindrop would then be a drop of water trapped in an ocean, when in reality, the raindrop is the ocean.
Craig Smedley
#15. Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
Agnes Smedley
#16. In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
Agnes Smedley
#18. I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
Agnes Smedley
#19. Why would science ever recognize God;
that would make [them] accountable for their crimes against [him].
Craig Smedley
#20. Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.
Agnes Smedley
#21. I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions. It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
Agnes Smedley
#22. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country ... but the profits ... skyrocket ...
Smedley Butler
#23. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.
Smedley Butler
#24. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
Smedley Butler
#25. 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.
Smedley Butler
#26. In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents.
Agnes Smedley
#27. To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. 1. We must take the profit out of war. 2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. 3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
Smedley D. Butler
#28. Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.
Agnes Smedley
#29. 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.
Smedley Butler
#30. 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.
Smedley Butler
#31. For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
Agnes Smedley
#32. It's hard to tread lightly when you continue to accumulate.
Craig Smedley
#33. 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.
Smedley Butler
#34. For months it seemed that a revolution was certain. But instead, slavery seems more likely now. The working class no longer has the physical resistance for a revolution, and the Entente is too strong, and Russia is too weak.
Agnes Smedley
#35. War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 masses.
Smedley Butler
#36. 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.
Smedley Butler
#37. There are many men - such as those often to be found among the Indians - who are refined until they have qualities often attributed to the female sex. Yet they are men, and strong ones.
Agnes Smedley
#38. And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.
Agnes Smedley
#39. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.
Smedley Butler
#40. 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.
Smedley Butler
#41. In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.
Smedley D. Butler
#42. One hundred and twenty Marines were detailed to officer a force of twenty-six hundred Haitians.
Smedley Butler
#43. Only those who have walked barefoot on gravel will appreciate soft sand beneath their feet.
Craig Smedley
#44. When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
Agnes Smedley
#45. The morbid reflection of an ailing body, predicates a mending spirit.
Craig Smedley
#46. Your eyes show you only what is in front of you; you must close them to see all other places.
Craig Smedley
#47. To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
Agnes Smedley
#48. 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.
Smedley Butler
#49. Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won't hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity!
Agnes Smedley
#50. War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
Smedley Butler
#51. What a couple. I'm consumed into ashes. And he's always raking up the ashes and setting them on fire again.
Agnes Smedley
#52. No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.
Agnes Smedley
#53. Understanding comes through communication, and through communication we find the way to peace.
Ralph C. Smedley
#54. But he like my mother, had certainly come to know that those who work the most do not make the most money. It was the fault of the rich, it seemed, but just how he did not know.
Agnes Smedley
#56. Germany is in terrible condition this year. This is particularly true of the working masses, who are so undernourished that tuberculosis is having a rich harvest, particularly of adolescent children.
Agnes Smedley
#57. There are only two reasons why you should ever be asked to give your youngsters. One is defense of our homes. The other is the defense of our Bill of Rights and particularly the right to worship God as we see fit. Every other reason advanced for the murder of young men is a racket, pure and simple.
Smedley D. Butler
#58. 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.
Smedley Butler
#59. Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
Agnes Smedley
#60. Faultfinding without suggestions for improvement is a waste of time.
Ralph C. Smedley
#61. Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books ... I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.
Agnes Smedley
#62. In a 1931 speech, Butler recounted a story about Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, how he had run over a child with his car, and said, as he moved on, "It was only one life. What is one life in the affairs of the State.
Smedley D. Butler
#63. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
Smedley Butler
#64. A speech without a specific purpose is like a journey without a destination.
Ralph C. Smedley
#66. 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
Smedley Butler
#67. I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
Agnes Smedley
#68. Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man ... the highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature.
Agnes Smedley
#69. I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat. I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
Agnes Smedley
#70. Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
Agnes Smedley
#71. 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!
Smedley Butler
#72. Why don't those damn oil companies fly their own flags on their personal property-maybe a flag with a gas pump on it.
Smedley Butler
#74. More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
Agnes Smedley
#75. 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.
Smedley Butler
#77. Whatever your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased.
Ralph C. Smedley
#78. There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
Agnes Smedley
#79. My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.
Agnes Smedley
#80. 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
#81. So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.
Agnes Smedley
#82. If the true nature of everything isn't extraordinary, then God would be ordinary.
Craig Smedley
#83. Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster.
Agnes Smedley
#84. But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
Agnes Smedley
#85. But I see no reason why a woman should not grow and develop in all those outlets which are suited to her nature, it matters not at all what they may be.
Agnes Smedley
#86. War is just a racket ... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.
Smedley Butler
#87. I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman. Friendship is far more human.
Agnes Smedley
#88. Tis but a gentle step from fading light to darkness, but a plunge for those who brightly burn.
Craig Smedley
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