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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:

Collective effort can produce collective security and that if such effort is not made, it is because the will and the courage to make it are not there.

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood The Future of Civilization (1938)

The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time … love lavished on absolute fools. Love's a charity ward, you know.

Lawrence Durrell

Peace to the shacks! War on the palaces!

Georg Büchner The Hessian Courier (1834)

If I could I would kiss his wrists.
If I had half the courage to face his pain.

Masiela Lusha Drinking the Moon (2006)

I am not a pacifist. That is not my attitude. But all my impressions of war are so bad that I could be for it only under the sternest necessity…

Paul von Hindenburg

In war, the poor are killed. In peace, the poor dies.

Mia Couto

Armenians have a genuine tale of woe. It largely overlaps with the tale of tragedy and suffering that can be told by Ottoman Muslims during the war years.

Bruce Fein Lies, Damn Lies, and Armenian Deaths (2009)

The humanising of war? You might as well talk about the humanizing of Hell!...... The essence of war is violence! Moderation in war is imbecility!.....

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

They don't have to fight wars! it mmight knock some sense into therir heads if they did!

Douglas Reeman A Tradition of Victory (1981)

I say there has been a war. If a fish comes out of the water and says the crocodile has one eye, who has been there with him?

Cyprian Ekwensi Burning Grass (1962)

Wars are a summer pastime, Althalus. Politics is a year-round entertainment.

David Eddings The Redemption of Althalus (2000)

I don’t see ANY beneficiary of this crazy war! Innocent people and soldiers are dying.

Oleg Tinkov

Just remember: strength and courage. If you stand on principle, you'll never lose.

Janet Reno

“War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.”

Aminatta Forna

In the second Punic war with winged flight
The Muse to Romulus’ warrior nation came.

Porcius Licinus

Karen tried to divine from the news whether they were winning the war or losing it. He might just as well have swirled tea leaves and looked for patterns there.

James S. A. Corey Livesuit (2024)

Beautiful Somali buildings are rising up in a former war zone. It gives me hope.

Sada Mire

By the end of the war in 1991, the lives of Eritrean women had changed so much they were determined not to go back to their traditional old roles.

Helen Meles

I was worried what other people would say. It was a tug of war of emotions. Eventually, I had no choice, I had to dive in

Fanele Ntuli

I am an African, and these are two African countries which have shed a lot of blood in the war that ended in 2000.

Joseph Legwaila

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