Skip to content

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:

The overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [i.e., specialists in the hadith] . . . understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.

Bernard Lewis

CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.

Arthur C. Clarke

“That was the time to begin all-out preparations for war.”
“On the contrary. That was the time to begin all-out prevention of war.”

Isaac Asimov The Foundation series (1951)

There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.

Montesquieu Lettres Persanes (1721)

Three cheers for the war. Three cheers for Italy's war and three cheers for war in general. Peace is hence absurd or rather a pause in war.

Benito Mussolini

It is by the progress of philosophy and by the spectacle of the happiness of France, that you will extend the empire of our revolution, and not by the force of arms and by the calamities of war.

Maximilien Robespierre

When I had my accident, I found out at that moment nothing in life is promised except death.

Kanye West

He knew that there was death—that there must be death if there were evolution, that death was one of the mechanisms that biologically spelled progress and advancement for evolutionary species.

Clifford D. Simak Time is the Simplest Thing (1961)

If the Lord sends us war, we have got to face it like men, but God forbid we should manufacture war, and use it as an escape from our domestic difficulties. You can't expect a blessing on that.

John Buchan The Path of the King (1921)

You don't fight a war with words, but with fortifications. The pickaxe and the shovel are as important at the rifle. I can't say it often enough.

Buenaventura Durruti

The world that is dead vitally and spiritually is not dead physically.

Frederick Soddy Matter, Energy, Consciousness and Spirit (1919)

But now she was fifty-seven, and suddenly ancient. Soon she would be dead. Dead. You can’t get any more ancient than that.

John Varley The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977)

Because I want to make a good death.

B. K. S. Iyengar

My whole life long I've sharpened my sword
And now, face to face with death
I unsheathe it, and lo -
The blade is broken -
Alas!

Dairin Soto

Those who ignore history’s lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them...they may be forced to die by them.

Dan Simmons The Fall of Hyperion (1990)

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

Isoroku Yamamoto

I'd like to choose my own kind of death, for a change. I'm tired of being tormented to hell. Tired of it.

Jim Jones Death Tape (1978)

What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer — war, and the preparations for new war.

Norman Mailer Barbary Shore (1951)

Clutter is death; it leads to thrashing. Keep desk clear: focus on one thing at a time.

Randy Pausch Time Management (2007)

And most important, nothing was to be taken for granted in that place. In Death’s world, any covenant, no matter how mighty, can fall null—any spell, however cogent, can be abrogated. The only certain law in that place is Death itself.

Michael Shea Nifft the Lean (1982)

Related topics