A militaristic society encourages blind obedience to authority, promotes security-based fears over critical thinking, prioritizes violent over peaceful methods of conflict resolution and problem solving, consumes the greater portion of its resources for the military, diminishes our overall quality of life, turns us away from developing the true economic, social and environmental bases of national security, thus threatening the long-term well-being of citizens and of our democracy.

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism."
 

-- Martin Luther King Jr. “A Time to Break Silence”
spoken at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967.

“Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue. Almost nothing is spent on education, art, literature and science compared with the amount devoted to militarism in times of peace, while in times of war everything else is set at naught; all life stagnates, all effort is curtailed; the very sweat and blood of the masses are used to feed this insatiable monster--militarism. Under such circumstances, it must become more arrogant, more aggressive, more bloated with its own importance. If for no other reason, it is out of surplus energy that militarism must act to remain alive; therefore it will seek an enemy or create one artificially. In this civilized purpose and method, militarism is sustained by the state, protected by the laws of the land, is fostered by the home and the school, and glorified by public opinion. In other words, the function of militarism is to kill. It cannot live except through murder”.

- Emma Goldman