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:
This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free.
Nothing is less compatible with military efficiency than political excitement.
His breast with wounds unnumber'd riven,
His back to earth, his face to heaven.
I am a soldier and unapt to weep
Or to exclaim on fortune's fickleness.
Of boasting more than of a bomb afraid,
A soldier should be modest as a maid.
Home they brought him slain with spears,
They brought him home at even-fall.
An atheist could not be as great a military leader as one who is not an atheist.
This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural."
O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!
O, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion than to start a hare!
We are not downhearted, but we cannot understand what is happening to our neighbours.
The flames of Moscow were the aurora of the liberty of the world.