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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:

I am trying to marshal all the forces I can to prevent this coming war, and to strengthen Britain.

Winston Churchill

If I don't get the oil of Maykop and Grozny, then I must finish (liquidieren) this war.

Adolf Hitler

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Stephen Crane War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)

We have no wish to war with the Soviet Union--for we are a peaceful people who desire to live in peace with all other peoples.

John F. Kennedy

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

Ernest Hemingway Introduction to Men at War (1942)

All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation... You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death.

Gertrude Stein Statement quoted by Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast (1964)

To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.

Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried (1990)

OK, everybody, I got to get to Star Wars.

Barack Obama

We cannot escape the prospect of nuclear war unless we all commit to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and pursuing a world without them.

Barack Obama United Nations Address (2016)

If I wanted to be bored by 6,000 pages of unreadable dreck, I'd read War and Peace four times.

Lewis Black Taxed Beyond Belief (2002)

You do not declare war on rebels.

David Lloyd George

I have come not to make war on the Italians, but to aid the Italians against Rome.

Hannibal

A lot of the blood of America's race war victims will be on the hands and bloated bodies of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.

Carl Rowan The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-up Call (1996)

I see that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of resistance. The war must be ended.

Wilhelm II, German Emperor

There’s no reason someone needs a weapon of war with 100 rounds, 100 bullets, that can be fired from that weapon. Nobody needs that, nobody needs that

Joe Biden

The cold war is over; Japan won.

Paul Tsongas

As human beings, we have the responsibility to harness the immense human potential for good, not evil; for love, not hatred; and for peace, not war.

Newton Lee

The view that he disapproves is always unbalanced; or stuck in the past; or stuck in the cold war mould; or subjective and emotional...

Arun Shourie Self-Deception : India's China Policies; Origins, Premises, Lessons (2008)

I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.

Billy Childish

Whensoever hostile aggressions...require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.

Thomas Jefferson

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