Smedley Butler quote: "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."

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brou...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

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

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This new...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

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

My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. Thi...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Hai...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restle...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

War is a racket. It always has been... A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop i...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twe...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits ...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

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

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired t...
SMEDLEY BUTLER

I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service . . . And during that period I spent most o...
GENERAL SMEDLEY BUTLER

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's ...
SMEDLEY D. BUTLER

The belief in immortality has always seemed cowardly to me. When very young I learned that all thin...
ANNE SMEDLEY

I hate female men.
AGNES SMEDLEY

I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
AGNES SMEDLEY

Germany is in terrible condition this year. This is particularly true of the working masses, who are...
AGNES SMEDLEY

Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently...
AGNES SMEDLEY

For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
AGNES SMEDLEY

For months it seemed that a revolution was certain. But instead, slavery seems more likely now. The ...
AGNES SMEDLEY

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never...
AGNES SMEDLEY

But I see no reason why a woman should not grow and develop in all those outlets which are suited to...
AGNES SMEDLEY

But he like my mother, had certainly come to know that those who work the most do not make the most ...
AGNES SMEDLEY

And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her...
AGNES SMEDLEY

The belief in immortality has always seemed cowardly to me. When very young I learned that all thing...
ANNE SMEDLEY

I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
AGNES SMEDLEY

Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot,...
AGNES SMEDLEY

Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been cau...
AGNES SMEDLEY

Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natur...
AGNES SMEDLEY

My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little, especially when...
AGNES SMEDLEY

When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
AGNES SMEDLEY

So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There wer...
AGNES SMEDLEY

Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
AGNES SMEDLEY

More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forev...
AGNES SMEDLEY

In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts,...
AGNES SMEDLEY

I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to re...
AGNES SMEDLEY

There are many men - such as those often to be found among the Indians - who are refined until they ...
AGNES SMEDLEY

No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is ...
AGNES SMEDLEY

What a couple. I'm consumed into ashes. And he's always raking up the ashes and setting them...
AGNES SMEDLEY

In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked w...
AGNES SMEDLEY

Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and...
AGNES SMEDLEY

All fair in love and war.
FRANCIS EDWARD SMEDLEY

All's fair in love and war.
FRANCIS EDWARD SMEDLEY

You are looking as fresh as paint.
F. E. SMEDLEY

When I'm 80 and sagging all over, I can tell my grandkids, 'Look, when I was a lad, 'Peo...
GERARD BUTLER

Honestly, what can really be said about 'the Jewish people' as a whole? Is it not a lamentab...
JUDITH BUTLER

I never worked less than 16-hour days on South Beach.
YANCY BUTLER

I think seeing some of the past can be helpful, especially if you're into crime solving.
YANCY BUTLER

I'll try anything once.
YANCY BUTLER

I'm open to sci-fi, but I was never a diehard fan. I have no idea why it keeps following me. I&#...
YANCY BUTLER

I'm the oldest 26-year-old I know. A lot of experience has been crammed into a short amount of t...
YANCY BUTLER

I've spent a lot of time and money trying to keep my anger in control.
YANCY BUTLER

My grandfather was a cop in Long Island. I often try to draw on things that I've heard about him...
YANCY BUTLER

My mother's side of the family was in the production side of theatre. My grandfather, Jose Vega,...
YANCY BUTLER

Once you get into a part, and someone sees you, you get asked to do it again.
YANCY BUTLER

To say I'm the easiest person to live with would be a lie.
YANCY BUTLER

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio b...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
SAMUEL BUTLER

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Whether it goes to series or stands by itself, I'm proud of what we did with it, not only from t...
YANCY BUTLER

A comic can be aesthetically beautiful. I think they captured it beautifully and accurately.
YANCY BUTLER

Don't we all just really try to fake it well?
YANCY BUTLER

I love old movies. The '40s theatre pace is fantastic.
YANCY BUTLER

I'm just an actress. They try to give me as little information as possible.
YANCY BUTLER

I've always played strong women who are doing their own thing.
YANCY BUTLER

Yancy is actually a Native-American name, but I'm Irish. Go figure.
YANCY BUTLER

I grew up in Greenwich Village. Dad was friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
YANCY BUTLER

My junior high was dreadful. I see a lot of my fellow alumni on America's Most Wanted.
YANCY BUTLER

Women have been kicking ass for centuries.
YANCY BUTLER

People just kind of associate me with kicking some ass.
YANCY BUTLER

Imagine if it happened to you: All of a sudden you find this thing on your wrist and people are tell...
YANCY BUTLER

My taste in music and entertainment is quite eclectic.
YANCY BUTLER

I pretty much make time for that weekly manicure.
YANCY BUTLER

I think sometimes women who are supposed to be strong are also written as mean and vindictive.
YANCY BUTLER

I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don'...
JUDITH BUTLER

We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or somethi...
JUDITH BUTLER

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good st...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to di...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A man who reads effeminate may well be consistently heterosexual, and another one might be gay. We c...
JUDITH BUTLER

Bishops are like umpires. You have to have them to call the close decisions.
FRANK BUTLER

I've had broken bones and cuts and dashes and tears from movies, but when I was five, my mom put...
GERARD BUTLER

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. ...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
OCTAVIA BUTLER

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there'...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if y...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilitie...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - eve...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's ot...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done an...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your ow...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
OCTAVIA BUTLER

While Fledging is a different type of book, The Parable series serve as cautionary tales. I wrote th...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think ...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some h...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comforta...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops ...
OCTAVIA BUTLER

Black Sabbath was written on bass: I just walked into the studio and went, bah, bah, bah, and everyb...
GEEZER BUTLER

Only if we accept the proposition that the state of Israel is the exclusive and legitimate represent...
JUDITH BUTLER

I love my iPhone; it's great to have a camera around all the time.
WIN BUTLER

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anyth...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Cameras help to minimize collateral damage, and very often, without a camera a missile cannot fire. ...
JUDITH BUTLER

I'm not big on the closet.
DAN BUTLER

I'm not a straight man, but I play one on television.
DAN BUTLER

There are so many different camps about what being gay means. The danger comes when each one is so r...
DAN BUTLER

Our responsibility as artists is to challenge ourselves.
DAN BUTLER

I'm an actor.
DAN BUTLER

Every retailer, when they price their goods, looks at their total cost overall. When they have costs...
DAN BUTLER

I think there are a lot of honest people doing honest business on online auctions. But the control o...
DAN BUTLER

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in t...
SAMUEL BUTLER

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart's Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I hea...
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of r...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The money men make lives after them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The want of money is the root of all evil.
SAMUEL BUTLER

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to r...
SAMUEL BUTLER

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
SAMUEL BUTLER

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survive...
PHILIP BUTLER

Life is one long process of getting tired.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
SAMUEL BUTLER

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage -- but they are also no less invalid...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does...
SAMUEL BUTLER

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which...
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
SAMUEL BUTLER

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
SAMUEL BUTLER

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging h...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
SAMUEL BUTLER

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
SAMUEL BUTLER

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer l...
SAMUEL BUTLER

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be b...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
SAMUEL BUTLER

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wa...
SAMUEL BUTLER

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. A...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every...
SAMUEL BUTLER

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more s...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all they did by reason and reason ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is tact that is golden, not silence.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.
SAMUEL BUTLER

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
SAMUEL BUTLER

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
SAMUEL BUTLER

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through eithe...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religi...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to ap...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it b...
SAMUEL BUTLER

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fightin...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Logic is like the sword
SAMUEL BUTLER

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond it...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he pro...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.
SAMUEL BUTLER

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any m...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A hen is only a egg's way of making another egg.
SAMUEL BUTLER

To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obl...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he no...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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.

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Smedley Butler

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

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