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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:

We do not want a war merely for the purpose of bringing to Germany people who simply do not want to be, or cannot be, Germans.

Adolf Hitler

In this different kind of war, we may never sit down at a peace table. But make no mistake about it, we are winning, and we will win.

George W. Bush

Yes, as my swift days near their goal
'Tis all that I implore
In life and death a chainless soul
With courage to endure.

Emily Brontë

As a gineral thing, when a woman wares the britches, she has a good rite tew them.

Josh Billings Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

My voice is still for war.
Gods! Can a Roman senate long debate
Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?

Joseph Addison Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

One battle doesn't make a campaign but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole goddamn war.

Ernest Hemingway Papa Hemingway (1966)

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

George Orwell The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.

George Orwell Notes on Nationalism (1945)

Allah's Apostle called: "War is deceit".

Muhammad

Two things greater than all things are,
The first is Love, and the second War.

Rudyard Kipling

War is the normal state of the people.

Benito Mussolini

Events cast long shadows before.
One such event would be a war.
But how are shadows to be seen
When total darkness fills the screen?

Bertolt Brecht Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

The strangest of our powers
Is the courage to live
Knowing that we will die,
Knowing nothing more true.

Nâzım Hikmet

The Bush Doctrine is a prescription for permanent war for permanent peace, though wars are the death of republics.

Pat Buchanan Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

Two things stand like stone: kindness in anothers trouble, courage in your own. (This is a quote from poet Adam Lindsay Gordon)

Diana, Princess of Wales

Where there’s war, there’s whores.

Bruce Sterling Islands in the Net (1988)

Do you know, I think you’d like politics at least on Barrayar. Maybe because it’s so similar to what we call war, elsewhere.

Lois McMaster Bujold Shards of Honor (1986)

Now we are suffering the evils of a long peace. Luxury, more destructive than war, has engrossed us, and avenges the vanquished world.

Juvenal

Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is élan, esprit de corps and determination.

George C. Marshall

Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.

Carl von Clausewitz On War (1832)

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