Veterans Day Quotes
Nothing on this page was written for Veterans Day. It is built from four pages, War, Courage, Patriotism and Gratitude, and the mix is not tidy. The war page contains plenty of writers who hated it, and the patriotism page contains Bertrand Russell remarking in 1962 that patriots talk of dying for their country and never of killing for it.
That makes the page more honest than a greeting card and less convenient. If you need a line of thanks, the gratitude entries are the safest place to look. If you want something that sounds like a speech, read the notes first, because some of the best-known patriotic lines here are flagged as misattributed.
Most quoted on veterans day:
Muster your wits: stand in your own defence;
Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence.
The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.
War itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.
He didn’t doubt there would be a next war; there would always be a next war.
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
I never felt so near the glory of Patriotism, the glory of making by any means a country happier.