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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:

… the Peace Treaties must be scrapped … I stand for no more war and no more secret diplomacy.

Clement Attlee

Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease.

Henri Barbusse Under Fire (1916)

We've been there on World Wars, it's time for World Party I.

Vanna Bonta

There never was a war that was
not inward; I must
fight till I conquered in myself what
causes war

Marianne Moore

"We walk to the ward from the badly parked car
with your grandma taking four short steps to our two.
We have brought her here to die and we know it."

Simon Armitage

Wars begin through greed and vanity and are continued through the insanity of nationalism in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

Billy Collins Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry (2004)

Take refuge in Lord, in His name and grace. All fears will vanish completely. He will bestow strength, fortitude, courage, presence of mind, etc., in you.

Swami Sivananda Conquest of Fear (1960)

Mussolini has destroyed communism and Freemasonry; he implicitly declared war upon Judaism too.

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936)

Liberia has given me a lot and the war took so much away.

Leymah Gbowee

During the U.S. trade war against Canada

Jean Chrétien

The steadiness of this country in the war will depend upon our making it clear that the Continent has voluntarily decided to seek its safety in arming.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

I am more interested in wars of the mind.

Hortense Calisher Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

War is wrong. Conscription is a concomitant of modern war. Thus conscription for so vast an evil as war is wrong.

Bayard Rustin To Local Board No. 63 (1943)

The experience I had seeing Star Wars for the first time was mind-blowing. Eleven is a great age to have your mind blown.

J. J. Abrams The Fresno Bee interview (2015)

Wars are not a pub brawl. ...[A]n aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war.

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

It was during the war, and they thought Kraft was too Teutonic, and they said I would be compared to Kraft cheese if I were bad.

Virginia Christine A Character Star Gets Her Perks Playing Coffee's Mrs. Olson (1979)

I have learned not only that the colors and the sounds of war are the same, but the fears of war are the same. You know, there is a fear of dying.

Zainab Salbi

[T]he truth is that Putin is war and crisis.

Boris Nemtsov

Arab Oil can never be dearer than Arab blood. famous world during 1973 war By Amena Azem.

Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan

War was to be entered upon with sadness, with regret, but also with ferocity.

T. R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War (1963)

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