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:
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
Strange that cowards cannot see that their greatest safety lies in dauntless courage.
True courage is like a kite: a contrary wind raises it higher.
You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
What would Lincoln have been without the Civil War? Just another railroad lawyer!
The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
Unsparing as the scourge of war,
Blasts follow blasts, and groves dismantled roar.
Two things greater
Than all things are;
And the first is love
And the second is war.