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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:

Whatever. As far as I can see, there is one state of dead and that’s ‘not living.’ Now, do you have anything useful to add to this investigation or not?”

Jasper Fforde Something Rotten (2004)

It will say just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war and what it means to us, as against what we claim it means to us.

James Jones

The nature of encounter operations required of the commanders limitless initiative and constant readiness to take the responsibility for military actions.

Georgy Zhukov

Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet, uploading one’s mind into a super-computer, migrating into outer space … Longing for everlasting life, humans show that they remain the death-defined animal.

John Gray The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

No evil is honorable; but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.

Zeno of Citium

Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.

Tanith Lee The Birthgrave (1975)

Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone—the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.

Svetlana Alexievich Voices from Chernobyl (2005)

I grinned. “The unwritten law of all armies, Captain. The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.”

Glen Cook The Black Company (1984)

The Feast of Birds is dedicated to Avalei, the Goddess of Love and Death, of whom my master had said: “Not all that is ancient is worthy of praise.”

Sofia Samatar A Stranger in Olondria (2013)

There is nothing more alien to a modern American than yesterday’s empires, with their arbitrary imperial powers, their cruelty, and their casual control over life and death.

Charles Sheffield Dancing with Myself (1993)

In the last 30 years, Croatia managed to achieve great things and Russia was always there when it was necessary, so thank you once again for that.

Gordan Grlić-Radman Gordan Grlić-Radman (2022)

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

George Bernard Shaw Overruled (1912)

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.

Ursula K. Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

In the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

One’s own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.

Glen Cook The White Rose (1985)

Millions of people had been uprooted by the war and could not adapt themselves to a new way of life. On the other hand, certain people had grown rich and powerful.

Joy Adamson

A pacifist between wars is like a vegetarian between meals.

Ammon Hennacy

It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.

Antisthenes

And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.

Aristotle

I don't know why you're talking about Sweden. They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.

George W. Bush

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