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Memorial Day Quotes

This page is assembled from three others: War, Death and Gratitude. There is no memorial collection underneath it. One poem is filed against the day itself, Joyce Kilmer’s, in Trees and Other Poems (1914), and it opens with a bugle that, he says, is not singing of war today.

The rest is whatever the three source pages rate highest, so it leans toward poetry and toward writers who saw war up close. Several famous lines about death and sacrifice carry flags here, so read the note on a quote’s own page before you attach a name to it.

Random quote on Memorial Day

Most quoted on memorial day:

War is failure! When you are at war, you have failed! When you have gone to a war of choice and lied about it, you're a double-triple, triple-quadruple failure!

Janeane Garofalo

Victories win wars. Give people victory and they won't care who won it.

Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

Enemies are right in front of you, you are at war with them, then you make an armistice with them, and all is clear. A traitor must be destroyed, crushed.

Vladimir Putin

My friends, there is no Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is only the global war on terrorism.

Tom DeLay

But one of the whole reasons we’re at war in Ukraine right now is because of NATO wanting to expand and bring Ukraine into its umbrella.

Scott Ritter

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

Jean Giraudoux Tiger at the Gates (1935)

In war-time, failure to lie is negligence, the doubting of a lie a misdemeanour, the declaration of the truth a crime.

Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede Falsehood in Wartime (1928)

The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Right now, the choice isn't between war and peace. It is between war and endless war.

Michael Scheuer

War's a fearsome thing. They'll be cunning that catches me at this wark again.

Walter Scott

Are there quantitative aspects to the phenomena of war that can be counted? Evidently!

Pitirim Sorokin Pitirim Sorokin (1937)

War is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.

Robert Fisk The Great War for Civilization (2005)

I would say that happiness lies in serving the Land. And I would say that there is no happiness in times of war.

Stephen R. Donaldson The Illearth War (1977)

The Conservatives can't talk of class war: they started it.

Stanley Baldwin

For a defeat in war is not the greatest of all evils; but when the defeat has been inflicted by enemies who are unworthy of you, then the calamity is doubled.

Aeschines Against Ctesiphon (-330)

More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing.

William F. Buckley Jr. The War On Drugs Is Lost (1995)

Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged. This is Liberty's work, and "Down with Authority" her war-cry.

Benjamin Tucker Libertys Declaration of Purpose (1881)

I think this sets a very bad precedent, the president unilaterally on his own starting war without any consent from Congress.

Rand Paul

Every Christian has the power to support or to oppose preparedness to wage atomic war.

Kirby Page Now is the Time to Prevent a Third World War (1950)

Now is the time to prevent a third world war.

Kirby Page Now is the Time to Prevent a Third World War (1950)

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