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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:

Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.

Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

War has been represented as necessary to prevent the too rapid increase of the population, but war mows down the flower of the young men, while it spares the men disgraced by nature. Hence it tends to the degeneration of the species.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

death. Its weight is not great.
How lightly and with what casual grace
we carry it with us everywhere we go.

Leah Goldberg

I'd like to thank my parents for providing me with a high IQ & I'd like to thank my grams for encouraging me not to be a self absorbed idiot

Frances Bean Cobain

We now have no option but to end war forever because with the nuclear bombs and armament today, we can destroy all life... it's up to us. We have to do it. We have to make the decision.

Benjamin Creme The State of the World 2010, public lecture in New York City, USA (2010)

I’m still proudest of The Death of Captain Marvel followed closely by various Dreadstar stories, Warlock, Kid Kosmos Kidnapped, The Thanos Quest and a series next-to-nobody ever read, called Wyrd, the Mystic Warrior...

Jim Starlin

You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round
With tombstones in their eyes
But the pusher don't care
Ah, if you live or if you die

Hoyt Axton The Pusher (1968)

We need a robust but targeted military approach. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no war-monger. I opposed the Iraq war and worked for a decade as an Oxfam aid worker – but this isn’t Iraq. This is a humanitarian crisis.

Jo Cox

The beast has long since stopped serving to become the master. The Confed did what governments were famed for: it made more government. To oppose it was treason, and worth death. Even a monster has fear.

Steve Perry The Man Who Never Missed (1985)

Man invents war. Man discovers peace. He invents war from without. He discovers peace from within. War man throws. Peace man sows. The smile of war is the flood of human blood. The smile of peace is the love, below, above.

Sri Chinmoy Songs of the Soul (1971)

It is a country (Israel) in which a clear majority of the population, battered by wars and terrorism and heartbreak and frustration, still wants to see negotiations leading to a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and an end to occupation.

Bradley Burston What Does 'Death to Israel' Mean to You? (2011)

[T]he American people deserve to know who we are at war with, especially if people are being killed in our name.

Elissa Slotkin Senator Slotkin Delivers Speech on Trump's Authoritarian Playbook (2025)

The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy.

Paul Craig Roberts

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war.

Charles de Gaulle

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.

Niccolò Machiavelli Florentine Histories (1526)

The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.

Emanuel Swedenborg Arcana Coelestia (1749)

The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he [Saddam Hussein] is in power.

Carl Levin

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