Quotes / War for Fun and Profit

Anime & Manga

Skull: And then it's only a matter of time before there's another world war.
Farej: Meaning a lot of business for us.
Skull: War is good for business.

—Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier, Episode 14

Film — Live-Action

"In matters of death, SPECTRE is strictly impartial."

—Blofeld, Never Say Never Again

"War on an industrial scale is inevitable. They'll do it themselves within a few years. All I have to do is wait."

—Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Oskar Schindler: In every business I tried, I can see now, it wasn't me that failed. Something was missing. Even if I'd known what it was, there's nothing I could have done about it because you can't create this thing. And it makes all the difference in the world between success and failure.
Emilie Schindler: Luck?
Oskar Schindler: War.

—Schindler's List

Oskar Schindler: We're doing well?
Itzhak Stern: Yes.
Schindler: Better this month than last?
Stern: Yes.
Schindler: Any reason to think next month will be worse?
Stern: The war could end.

—Schindler's List

"I hired you to help me start a war. It's a prestigious line of work, with a long and glorious tradition."

—Vizzini, The Princess Bride

"It's odd, but when I hired Vizzini to have her murdered on our engagement day, I thought that was clever. But it's going to be so much more moving when I strangle her on our wedding night. Once Guilder is blamed, the nation will truly be outraged. They'll demand we go to war!"

—Prince Humperdinck, The Princess Bride

"Iraq is making us enough money to make God cream in his fucking jeans!"

—Dr. Chushfield, Zombie Strippers!

"So war is still the greatest business, huh, Nelson? I mean, these guys have financed & started every war we've ever fought. But you know something? Nobody would believe me if I told them the bankers run the C.I.A."

—Nico Toscani, Above the Law (1988)

Lex Luthor: I escaped from prison with one thing on my mind: The end of Superman. So there I was, the first time ever, that I didn't have a long-range, truly devious criminal scheme. And then I came up with it. With this guy and you gone, I'll make a fortune rearming the world.

Superman: You'd risk nuclear war for your financial gain.

Luthor: Nobody wants war. I just want to keep the threat alive.

— Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

"The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of the modern state over its people resides in its war powers. Today, it's oil. Tomorrow, water. It's what we like to call the GOD business: Guns, Oil, and Drugs. But there is a problem. Our way of life, it's over. It's unsustainable and in rapid decline. That's why we implement demand destruction. We continue to make money, as the world burns. But for this to work the people have to remain ignorant of the problem until it's too late. That's why we have triggers in place: 9/11, 7/7, WMDs. A population in a permanent state of fear does not ask questions. Our desire for war, becomes its desire. A willing sacrifice. You see, fear is justification. Fear is control. Fear...is money."

— Gerry Langdon, The Veteran (2011)

"You're like genital warts! Always showing up where you're not wanted and refusing to go away! I guess you figured out that this device right here is the only thing preventing World War III, a conflict that, while devastating for many, it'll be insanely, insanely, INSANELY profitable for somebody, and that somebody is gonna be me! And the Expendables WILL TAKE ALL THE BLAME! So, ENJOY THE SHOW!"

— Marsh, Expend4bles

"I knew a mercenary in the Ivory Coast. He said they fought a civil war over cashews."

— The Mother

Literature

In the vast game of Darwinian musical chairs, whenever the music stopped there were large numbers of people without a seat—and some smartass had sold them guns.

—Daniel Suarez, Kill Decision

Live-Action TV

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition Nr. 34: War is good for business.''

—Star Trek (Rules of Acquisition)'

Morden: It's like knocking over an anthill. Every new generation gets stronger. The anthill gets redesigned, made better.
Sheridan: So that's what the Shadows do. Come out every few thousand years, and "kick over all the anthills." Start wars, destroy entire races.

—Babylon 5, "Z'ha'dum"

Scrozzle:With Master Zedd's evil energy crammed in that tube, it won't take much for us to set it off. When it blows, a wave of pure evil will sweep the universe, purging the cosmos of all that is good. Only the wicked will remain!

[..]

Bajillia Naire: And yes, this will be bad for workers' rights, but we in the arms trade will make bank! With no heroes, eternal war is finally possible.

—Power Rangers Cosmic Fury

Music

Let's have a war
So you can go and die
Let's have a war
We could all use the money
Let's have a war
We need the space
Let's have a war
Clean out this place

—F.E.A.R., "Let's Have a War"

You that never done nuthin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

—Bob Dylan, "Masters of War"

Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong

—Country Joe and the Fish, "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die-Rag"

Time will tell on their power minds

Making war just for fun

Treating people just like pawns in chess

Wait till their judgement day comes, yeah!

— Black Sabbath, "War Pigs"

Stand-Up Comedy

"So Let Me Get This Straight.... We invade a country with oil, with oil, but gas costs more? That don’t make no fucking sense! Now I didn’t go to no fancy school or nothing, but I tell you this right now, if I invade Kentucky Fried Chicken, wings will be cheap at my house."

— Chris Rock, Kill The Messenger

Video Games

"News has arrived of an impending global war. The death of millions is a wonderful business opportunity."

—Renon, Castlevania 64

"Elkoss Combine sells weapons, armor and funeral services. If you can arm them and bury them, you never have to fly coach."

— Rupe Elkoss, Mass Effect 3

"Maybe they're like us in the arms industry. Always looking forward to the next good war."

—Kenneth Baker, Metal Gear Solid

"'A clean break from the war economy.' Ha! Well, some of us liked that economy. How's an honest warmonger supposed to make a living?"

— Sundowner, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

"There are those who need war, and those who supply it."

— Maumi Orishina, The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces

Western Animation

"Schindler and I are like peas in a pod! We're both factory owners. We both made shells for the Nazis. But mine worked, dammit!"

— Monty Burns, The Simpsons

"Do you have any idea, you misfit, how much money a war can bring in to those who have the means to make it happen, where and when they want it to? It makes no difference to us who wins and who loses, the Consortium supplies everything to everyone. Weapons, of course, but also equipment, uniforms, and food. First there was yellow gold, Malo, then there was black gold. But I'm interested in red gold, stained with blood."

— Yago Carcharias, Malo Korrigan ("Pacem")

Real Life

War is the health of the state.

—Randolph Bourne

Кому война, а кому мать родна. (To some it is war, to others a dear mother.)

—Russian proverb

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

—Major General Smedley Butler

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government."

—From the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower

“We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them. The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every US president has to have a war.”

—Mikhail Gorbachev

"Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot."

—Jon Stewart hosting the Peabody Awards, 2006

Because there was no real reason to fight, there was an urgent need to swiftly turn to senseless fratricide, one organized by criminals and third-rate political leaders for power and wealth, into an orgy of killing, torture, and mass execution...Ethnic warfare is a business, and the Mercedes and mansions of the warlords in Belgrade prove it.

—Chris Hedges on The Yugoslav Wars, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."

—Rupert Murdoch on the Iraq War (this quote aged well)

That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. This war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.

— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without A Country, on the Iraq War

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