Top 39 Standing Army Quotes
#1. What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty ... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.
Elbridge Gerry
#2. Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett
#3. A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. This [a state militia system] appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.
Alexander Hamilton
#5. All's the government should do is keep the taxes and regulations at a manageable rate, keep a decent standing army and get out of the way.
Adam Carolla
#6. You cannot build up a standing army and then throw it back into a box like tin soldiers. Armies equipped to the teeth with weapons, with highly developed instruments of murder and backed by their military interests, have their own dynamic functions.
Emma Goldman
#7. If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it's an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army.
Ezra Klein
#8. Courage is the standing army of the soul which keeps it from conquest, pillage, and slavery.
Henry Van Dyke
#9. A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.
Samuel Adams
#10. A standing army is like a standing member. It's an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.
Elbridge Gerry
#11. That standing army can never be formidable (threatening) to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in the use of arms.
Alexander Hamilton
#13. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.
Henry David Thoreau
#14. In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character ...
Adam Smith
#15. You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.
David Ogilvy
#16. Firefly: Now that you're Secretary of War, what kind of an army do you think we oughta have? Chicolini: Well, I tell you what I think. I think we should have a standing army. Firefly: Why should we have a standing army? Chicolini: Because then we save money on chairs.
Groucho Marx
#17. By the end of the Twentieth Century, taxation will be reduced to a minimum, the entire world will be open to trade, and there will be no need of a standing army.
Erastus Wiman
#18. Education safeguards liberty better than a standing army.
Edward Everett
#19. Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.
James Madison
#20. None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.
Thomas Jefferson
#21. The chief support of an autocracy is a standing army. The chief support of a democracy is an educated people.
Lotus Coffman
#22. There is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.
James Burgh
#23. A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.
James Madison
#24. War is the sure result of the existence of armed men. That country which maintains a large standing army will sooner or later have a war. The man who prides himself on fisticuffs is going, some day, to meet a man who considers himself the better man, and they will test the issue.
Elbert Hubbard
#25. Soviet power is a new type of state in which there is no bureacracy, no police, no standing army.
Vladimir Lenin
#26. What a battle a man must fight everywhere to maintain his standing army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly array throughthe always hostile country! How many enemies there are to sane thinking! Every soldier has succumbed to them before he enlists for those other battles.
Henry David Thoreau
#27. Big banks are more dangerous than standing armies, and the practice of borrowing and spending money to be paid back by the next generation is stealing from their future.
Thomas Jefferson
#28. Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
#29. Have you ever had an itch so awful that you must scratch it or die? And yet you can't?"
His lips twitched. "Yes. Usually in one's army boot, while standing in knee-deep water in a trench. While people are shooting. That absolutely guarantees an unreachable itch.
Lisa Kleypas
#30. Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
Herman Melville
#31. That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free state, that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided ...
George Mason
#32. I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for ... protection against standing armies
Thomas Jefferson
#33. Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.
Immanuel Kant
#34. The potential savings in the national budgets from the elimination of police, criminal courts, standing armies, pollution control agencies, drug enforcement, and many poverty programs is almost beyond calculation.
Pat Robertson
#35. [O]ur War of the Revolution was, in good measure, fought as a protest against standing armies.
Earl Warren
#36. An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics - that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe ...
James Madison
#37. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
St. George Tucker
#38. The American republics have no standing armies to intimidate a discontented minority; but as no minority has as yet been reduced to declare open war, the necessity of an army has not been felt.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#39. Your Marines having been under my command for nearly six months, I feel that I can give you a discriminating report as to their excellent standing with their brothers of the army and their general good conduct.
John J. Pershing
