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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:

We would rather starve than sell our national honor.

Indira Gandhi

On they moved, by Neptune led
With firm hand grasping his long-bladed sword
Keen as Jove's bolt.

Homer

I drunk him to his bed,
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan.

William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra (1607)

They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs.

J. R. R. Tolkien The Two Towers (1954)

Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.

Alan Moore

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

Aldous Huxley Pacifism and Philosophy (1936)

Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a wench or takes some trifle?

Joseph Stalin

Courage is the price that
Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

Amelia Earhart

My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre, taught me not to be afraid. And just as in dueling when you must concentrate on your enemy's cheek, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in.

Otto Skorzeny

“What are the bugles blowin' for?” said Files-on-Parade.
“To turn you out, to turn you out”, the Colour-Sergeant said.

Rudyard Kipling Barrack-Room Ballads (1892)

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

Karl Kraus Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

I am skeptical about preventing wars. I doubt if they can be prevented. There will always be wars. Judging by past experiences, working for peace now would be as ineffective as ever. It's a law of nature.

Wilhelm Frick

International wars became rare only after 1945, largely thanks to the new threat of nuclear annihilation.

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.

Donald Trump

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Thomas Jefferson

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.

Heraclitus

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

Heraclitus

Courage in danger is half the battle.

Plautus

A brave man's country is wherever he chooses his abode.

Quintus Curtius Rufus

That possession which we gain by the sword is not lasting; gratitude for benefits is eternal.

Quintus Curtius Rufus

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