“The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military’s motives.”

—  Mark Riebling

Rumsfeld’s New Spy Unit (2002)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic…" by Mark Riebling?
Mark Riebling photo
Mark Riebling39
American writer 1963

Related quotes

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behavior and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalize original and imaginative thinking.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 9 “Long Haul”, p. 101

“Everyone acknowledges that people come to the evidence with different preconceptions. But we can't go into these problems assuming that the civilian bias, which tends toward arms control, and the view that everyone is rational, is necessarily more appropriate than the military bias. That needs to be argued, not just assumed.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Rumsfeld’s New Spy Unit (2002)

Maureen Dowd photo

“Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.”

Maureen Dowd (1952) American journalist

Marshall McLuhan photo

“World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970), p.66

Joseph Heller photo

“Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Brett Velicovich photo

“People tend to talk in terms of how many people and civilians the United States has killed using drones. One question I’m never asked, though, is how many lives did you save?”

Brett Velicovich (1983)

What Drone Warfare Does to a Soldier's Brain http://www.gq.com/story/drone-warfare-interview-brett-velicovich, GQ Magazine, 29 June 2017

Hastings Ismay photo

“Churchill owed more, and admitted that he owed more [to Ismay] than to anybody else, military or civilian, in the whole of the war.”

Hastings Ismay (1887–1965) Army officer

Colville, John. Winston Churchill and His Inner Circle. New York: Wyndham Books, 1981. p. 161
About

Maxwell D. Taylor photo

“It is hard to suggest a remedy for this situation, which is one no military man enjoys. One alternative would be to refuse to permit military officers to appear before Congress and leave the defense of military matters to the civilian secretaries. This is the solution followed in Great Britain and many European countries. I doubt that it will ever be accepted in the United States, where the COngress wants to hear the facts from military men who presumably are without political motivation. A second alternative would be to take the position that the advice of the Chiefs of Staff to their civilian superiors is privileged and not to be revealed under Congressional interrogation. Thus far the Executive authority has not seen fit to raise the storm such a stand would create.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: The Uncertain Trumpet (1960), p. 113

“When we get upset and angry about politics — whether it is conservative, liberal, or whatever — we tend to think in terms of right and wrong, not what we can learn.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: The country we live in is a laboratory. We have one experiment after another. Unfortunately, it is not a laboratory where no one gets hurt: some lives are enhanced, others are ruined. We have to view our society with concern and passion, and see what we can learn from each of our experiments. When we get upset and angry about politics — whether it is conservative, liberal, or whatever — we tend to think in terms of right and wrong, not what we can learn.

Wesley Clark photo

“I think the United States military was as humane and careful as it possibly could have been in the Kosovo campaign. But still, civilians died. And I’ll always regret that.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now (2 March 2007)

Related topics