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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:

These kids, they do not need us to win wars for them. They need us to build a world for them that will allow them to dream, to grow, to live.

Nicole Cordoves

Poor Nietzsche! He was the only philosopher who had the singular privilege of being held responsible for nothing less than a world war.

Franco Volpi

Without national security, we will lose everything, everything that we value. By all means, let’s avoid even a Cold War, if we can.

Morris Chang

The artillery is a god of modern war.

Joseph Stalin

The drive to put more sanctions on Russia might feel good. But fueling a new Cold War can only propel the United States in the wrong direction.

Norman Solomon

There will be no Jewish survivors in the holy war for liberating Palestine

Ahmad Shukeiri

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary... and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Abraham Lincoln

This war, let it be long or let it be short, let it cost much or let it cost little... shall not cease until every freedman at the South has the right to vote.

Frederick Douglass What the Black Man Wants (1865)

And is there no war on today? It is the weapons that have changed, that's all. Instead of an axe or scythe or scimitar, they fight with roubles.

Bolesław Prus

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.

Joan Baez

General Franco made it clear that Spain could enter the war only when England was about ready to collapse.

Wilhelm Canaris

My greatest concern watching the Israel-Gaza war unfold is that there is genocidal intent, which can easily tip into genocidal action.

Omer Bartov

Even a fool could see that one didn't need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself; the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely.

Stanisław Lem Peace on Earth (1987)

Don John of Austria is going to the war.

G. K. Chesterton Poems (1917)

Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Masque of Anarchy (1819)

Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?

John Milton The History of England (1670)

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain.

John Donne Poems (1633)

Thus in a pageant-show a plot is made;
And peace itself is war in masquerade.

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Atomic war is bad but you know what's even worse? Having had enough atomic wars that you can rank them in terms of horribleness.

James Nicoll

We must support the army as though there were no White Paper, and fight the White Paper as though there were no war.

David Ben-Gurion

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