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:
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.
Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam,
His first, best country ever is, at home.
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
Shall a nation be moulded at last.
There are no points of the compass on the chart of true patriotism.
It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.
When I'm not thank'd at all, I'm thank'd enough,
I've done my duty, and I've done no more.