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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:

It is high time we treated drug abuse and terrorism as diseases instead of wars -- curing the patients rather than killing them.

Newton Lee

Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!

John Galsworthy Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

Having lost the last war, they are currently enjoying a Wirtschaftswunder, which can be briefly translated as "The best way to own a Mercedes is to build one."

Alan Coren The Sanity Inspector (1974)

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to John Sinclair (1798)

If you want to buy my wares
Follow me and climb the stairs …
Love for sale.

Cole Porter

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination. (p17, III: "What would we create?")

Adrienne Rich What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993)

Only the Jews had remained victorious after the dreadful days of World War I. These were the people of whom Christ said, "Its father is the devil."

Julius Streicher

In my opinion, a war between England and Germany was a war between brothers. In my inner self I admired the English government and political system.

Walter Schellenberg

All societies that have survived have survived based on their ability to prepare their sons to be disposable, in war and at work--and therefore as dads.

Warren Farrell The Myth of Male Power (1993)

Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.

Jacob M. Appel The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (2012)

As you watch her story tonight, I know you will see the friend I know - a person of strength, intellect, capacity and truly remarkable courage.

Tony Abbott Leader of the Opposition (2009)

He’d caused the First Native War on Mars, by taking advantage of the fact that at that time human law had not defined the killing of Martians as murder.

Murray Leinster Anthropological Note (1957)

Modern warfare is ghastly beyond exaggeration and civil war among industrial populations is the most diabolical form of conflict.

Kirby Page Individualism and Socialism (1933)

War is atrocity; war is a method of savage violence.

Kirby Page Must We Go to War? (1937)

A deep fog of obscurity is thrown about war by the use of misleading and confusing terms.

Kirby Page Must We Go to War? (1937)

It is no longer possible to place a halo around war and speak of it in idealistic terms.

Kirby Page What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

Preparedness to use the weapons of war creates the tempers, the quarrels and the crises which lead to the outbreak of war.

Kirby Page What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage.

Brené Brown Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (2021)

Since I'm shouldering this commitment, I will do it with courage and without fear. Being the president of the Republic of China is no simple task.

Hung Hsiu-chu Hung Hsiu-chu (2015)

Let us be clear: the Yemeni revolution has already brought internal stability to a state riddled with war and conflict.

Tawakkol Karman Our revolution's doing what Saleh can't – uniting Yemen (2011)

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