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.
Most quoted on veterans day:
In the year of Christ 1183, the House of Plantagenet was at war against itself.
Living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage (p16)
[I take] full military responsibility for the actions of the army in the war against terrorism.
War is a convenient fix for government problems if it happens somewhere else. To other people.
Even if my country remains at war with yours . . . remember ... I am not your enemy.
That was my plan. But there is an old saying about plans and war.
I would have done well to heed it.
South Koreans do not consider the integrity of their state important enough to go to war for.
Ward: "Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart."