A History Talks Issue 5 Volume 1

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official...
~Theodore Roosevelt

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

~General Smedley Butler

Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people.

~John T. Flynn

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

~General Smedley Butler

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

~George McGovern

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.

~A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"

We are the ones responsible to determine whether the war that our marines, soldiers and airmen are fighting in is worth the cause...

~Scott Ritter

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

~Thucydides

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

~Frederick Douglass

The dangerous patriot...drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.

~Ernie Pyle

It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

~Theodore Roosevelt

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood...War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

~Groucho Marx

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.

~Mark Twain

 [The] constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honourable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicted on its circulation and you know what circulation depends on.

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, 1953

The important thing about the so-called ‘communication industry’ is that it is basically concerned with merchandising. News is a kind of by-product and if you want sell things, you don’t want to offend anybody.

I.F.Stone, The Listner magazine, 1963

News is something someone, somewhere doesn’t want you to print – the rest is advertising.

Anonymous

All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and bayonet the wounded.

Anonymous

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

~Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

Football is a game designed to keep coal miners of the streets.

Jimmy Breslin, American Writer,1973.