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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:

Never go to war with a noun. You will always lose.

John Green

Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.

Walter Cronkite UN Address (1999)

A war minister is able to force the adoption of any measure desired by the Camp or to block any measure that meets his disapproval.

Sadao Araki

Government wars aren't my wars; they've got nowt to do with me, because my own war's all that I'll ever be bothered about.

Alan Sillitoe The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1958)

The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.

Barbara Tuchman A Distant Mirror (1978)

Everything in German sounds like a war crime. And everything in Austrian German sounds like a war crime served with whipped cream.

Johannes Grenzfurthner

Confrontation is the road to war, destruction and end of civilization.

Yevgeniy Chazov Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech (1985)

“Responsibility is never imposed; it is assumed, often in the quiet courage of everyday decisions.” K. P.

Kuruvilla Pandikattu

It would be a fine thing if war could be conducted as a game where no lives were lost. At the end of a battle combatants could meet [...] and drink and talk.

David Gemmell

Patience is not very different from courage. It just takes longer.

James Richardson Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Only miscalculation could kill you in interstellar war. The equations were hard but they were fair.

Ian McDonald The Tear (2008)

The war method has no place in it for the spirit and practices of Jesus.

Kirby Page Must We Go to War? (1937)

The familiar rationale of white rule in Africa was that it conferred the benefits of civilization. The war made a mockery of that claim.

Niall Ferguson Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

It is true that internationalism is growing. Economists warn us that war does not pay. It is bad business.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)

You cannot wage war with sentimentality. The more ruthlessly war is conducted, the more merciful is it in fact, for it finishes the war the sooner.

Paul von Hindenburg

We printed our own money because we watched Federal dollars come to town, shake a few hands, then leave to buy rainforest lumber and fight wars.

Paul Glover

If the Pakistan prime minister thinks he can threaten us with war, let him know that 98 crore Indians are ready for it.

Subramanian Swamy

Have the courage to stand out from your colleagues by being very open to and comfortable with all kinds of diversity amongst your colleagues and stakeholders.

Nigel Cumberland Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014)

There are many different ways of categorizing news. It doesn't have to be just war and famine and serious politics.

Piers Morgan

In my opinion, even with climate extremes, we can end world hunger. But it’s just not doable without the wars being ended.

David Beasley

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