“The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy.”

— Edward Abbey

Abbey's Road (1979)
Context: The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer." Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed — but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny.

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Edward Abbey 146

American author and essayist 1927–1989

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

“Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"You and the Atom Bomb" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb, Tribune (19 October 1945)

“Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. ”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

“The war was fought throughout and ultimately won, not only by the usual military weapons in the narrower sense, but by the whole economic, industrial, and financial systems of the belligerent Powers. Food, shipping, metals and raw materials, credit, transport, industries and factories of all kinds played just as important a part as guns, rifles, aeroplanes, tanks, explosives and gas, warships and submarines.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

The League of Nations - A Practical Suggestion, C: The League and World-Peace, Hodder and Stoughton, 1918

“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business.”

Noam Chomsky book Deterring Democracy

Deterring Democracy (1992), p. 357 http://books.google.com/books?id=uZui06DXqmcC&pg=PA357.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

“Influence without control is a weapon of mass destruction.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

“…controls on behavior shift from the intermediate levels of human experience (social, emotional and religious) to the lower (military and political) or to the upper (ideological). They become the externalized controls of a mature society: weapons, bureaucracies, material rewards, or ideology.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“The choice of methods and weapons to be used by the champions of democracy will not depend upon our wishes but will be determined by political and social conditions. and especially by the methods and weapons of the enemy.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship
"Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

“To use a fighter as a fighter-bomber when the strength of the fighter arm is inadequate to achieve air superiority is putting the cart before the horse.”

Adolf Galland (1912–1996) German World War II general and fighter pilot

Quoted in "The First and the Last," 1954.
The First and the Last (1954)

“Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide.”

Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) Italian physicist

On the Hydrogen bomb in a minority addendum http://honors.umd.edu/HONR269J/archive/GACReport491030.html (co-authored with I. I. Rabi) to an official General Advisory Committee report for the Atomic Energy Commission (30 October 1949)
Context: Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country... The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.

“The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy.”

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