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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:

Sadly, war has become a popular option in the political playbook, a child’s play with deadly consequences.

Newton Lee

There is no doubt that the United States and Germany had their own interests in igniting wars in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia.

Radovan Karadžić

Paradis, possessed by his notion, waved his hand towards the wide unspeakable landscape. and looking steadily on it repeated his sentence, 'War is that.

Henri Barbusse Under Fire (1916)

When the world wide war is over and done
And the dream of peace comes through
We'll all be drinking some free bubble up
And eating some rainbow stew.

Merle Haggard

It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.

John Knowles A Separate Peace (1959)

And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,—
"O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief."

James Weldon Johnson Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Ah well, these little mysteries, morbid curiosities, war is full of them. - Dr Ahmet Talzani

Scott Anderson Triage (1998)

May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
— I didn't lay down my life in World War II
so that you could borrow my wheelbarrow

Adrian Mitchell

I count the columned waves at war
With Titan elements; and they,
In martial splendor, storm the bar
And shake the world, these bits of spray.

Joaquin Miller The Building of the City Beautiful (1905)

In his mind, he could see the ravages of war: destruction, suffering, hunger, and the grotesque faces of men turned beasts by the bitterness of combat.

Chinua Achebe Girls at War and Other Stories (1973)

It was clear to me that the invasion changed the whole possibilities of the outcome of the war.

Tim Buck

Then they died.
And other men came after them. Wars flamed up and burned out; the howling peoples dwelt in smashed cities and kindled their fires with books.

Poul Anderson The Enemy Stars (1959)

When World War II started on September 1, 1939, the German army contained 3.74 million soldiers and 103 divisions.

John Mearsheimer The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)

The prize has provided me a global platform to broaden the conversation about war, peace, and stability.

Leymah Gbowee

Distinguish between the outlawry of war and the abolition of war. The former is only a step in the direction of the latter.

Kirby Page An American Peace Policy (1925)

The totalitarian nature of modern war renders invalid the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.

Kirby Page Must We Go to War? (1937)

There should be no civil war among the Chinese people and no friction across the Taiwan Strait.

Wu Po-hsiung Hu reiterates opposition to Taiwan independence (2012)

The authentic British poetry of the second world war was not a poetry of protest, still less was it inspired by patriotic enthusiasm

Vernon Scannell

And for them [Ukrainians] this choice looks so: either a common state with Russia or eternal war.

Dmitry Medvedev

I do not fear a threat of war from Pakistan. We (India) are ten times bigger. If Pakistan were to attack us, we will smash them.

Subramanian Swamy

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