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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:

I feel that on account of ... countless war widows and orphans ... I should waive collection of a pension.

Aurora Quezon

the need to reduce the fears, tensions and presssures of war.

Lloyd (Bud) Winter Relax and Win (1981)

“I am grateful. Your overwhelming vote for me is a vote of courage, a source of strength to do the right things when the time comes and the time is now.”

Paul Nnamchi

FoxNews hates the #SyriaWithdrawal. So does #MSNBC and #CNN. So both parties, cable networks and weapons makers all agree. No wonder our wars never end.

Medea Benjamin

Index entry, The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948)

Winston Churchill The Second World War (book series) (1948)

War as I knew it (1947), as cited in Oxford Essential Quotations (4th ed.), By Susan Ratcliffe.

George S. Patton

I would go to the war — I would kill and maybe die — because I was embarrassed not to. That was the sad thing. And so I sat in the bow of the boat and cried.

Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried (1990)

I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.

Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried (1990)

I'm sickened by the way that the delivery of so-called humanitarian aid is once again being used as a justification — or cover — for war.

Susan Sontag Salon interview (2001)

The guy's a war hero. He's not a coward like George Bush. He didn't duck into a Champagne unit in the Texas Air National Guard and disappear like George Bush.

Mike Malloy

Well, it was war - I could not have carried on as an administrative officer if I had let myself be swayed emotionally by my feelings.

Oswald Pohl

Tolstoy's War and Peace is overblown – do yourself a favour and read his Death of Ivan Ilych.

Philip Ó Ceallaigh Interview by Tom Vowler (2010)

That's the only way you can stop war, stop participating in it, and stop so much consumption that requires war, at least that's the way I look at it.

Juanita Morrow Nelson

there is no courage in being fearless. Do you not know that? A person who knows fear and yet can still think of others, well, he be a brave man.

Paula Brackston

If the attack were traceable to the United States, "It’s an act of war."...

Seymour Hersh

Let the ward councilor, let the church people, let the professional in and around the school show interest in the schools not the school governing body only

Tom Manthata

I had to fight a war to get into the Kenya team

Joseph Ebuya

Pippa' Passworthy: This little upset across the water doesn't mean anything. Threatened men live long and threatened wars never occur.

H. G. Wells Things to Come (1936)

Within one cup pour vinegar and oil,
And look! unblent, unreconciled, they war. (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)

Aeschylus Oresteia (-458)

... in the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.

Carl von Clausewitz On War (1832)

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