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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.

Random quote on Veterans Day

Most quoted on veterans day:

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.

George Orwell Notes on Nationalism (1945)

If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Letter to an American (1944)

The Irish caught hell, the Jews caught hell, the Polacks caught hell. We want Ward 8 to be the model of diversity.

Marion Barry

I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples.

William James The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)

Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.

Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl (1942)

I never felt that there was any conflict between my military duties and my Socialism. Why should not a good soldier be also a fighter in the class war?

Benito Mussolini

You develop courage, the most important of all the virtues, because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

Maya Angelou

I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.

Steve Jobs Steve Jobs quoted on Google Android (2010)

The lesser with the greater ever wars.

Euripides Phoenissae (-409)

You don't support the troops; you support the war machine!

Jon Stewart In response to the PACT Act initially being held up in the Senate (2021)

They haven't met a war they won't sign up for, and they haven't met a veteran they won't screw over!

Jon Stewart In response to the PACT Act initially being held up in the Senate (2021)

This war nonsense was a great psychological education. That chronometer had to be wrong. Surely it had been a year, and not an hour…

Lois McMaster Bujold Shards of Honor (1986)

None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.

Elie Wiesel Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

Barack Obama Nobel Prize acceptance speech (2009)

We know that the killers in San Bernardino used military-style assault weapons — weapons of war — to kill as many people as they could.

Barack Obama We Will Not Be Terrorized (2015)

They vote for us to go to war instantly, but none of their kids serve in the infantry.

Immortal Technique Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.

Eugene V. Debs The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.

Eugene V. Debs The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

War and occupation create innocent victims.

George Soros Why We Must Not Reelect President Bush (2004)

The advice I would give is: If you have the courage to do so, don't feel patriotic in monetary matters. Choose the money which helps you best.

Friedrich Hayek

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