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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:

With a soldier the flag is paramount.

Ulysses S. Grant

Violence is man re-creating himself.

Frantz Fanon

Physical violence would be impossible without deep unconsciousness. It can also occur easily whenever and wherever a crowd of people or even an entire nation generates a negative collective energy field.

Eckhart Tolle

There's a brave fellow! There's a man of pluck!
A man who's not afraid to say his say,
Though a whole town's against him.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Christus (1872)

The brave man seeks not popular applause,
Nor, overpower'd with arms, deserts his cause;
Unsham'd, though foil'd, he does the best he can,
Force is of brutes, but honor is of man.

John Dryden

Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe:
They took the spear, but left the shield.

Philip Morin Freneau

"Companions," said he [Saturninus], "you have lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general."

Michel de Montaigne

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style."

Rebecca Solnit

We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count."

Neal A. Maxwell

A man of courage is also full of faith.

Cicero

War is fought by human beings.

Carl von Clausewitz

Of course wars are fought by teenagers. Do you realize that? They really should be fought by the politicians and the old people who start these wars.

James Clavell interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio (1986)

At the border posts, shed blood becomes a sea,
The martial emperor's dream of expansion has no end.

Du Fu

When 'tis an aven thing in th' prayin', may th' best man win … an' th' best man will win.

Finley Peter Dunne

Mankind must put an end to war — or war will put an end to mankind

John F. Kennedy

Arms on armour clashing bray'd
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots ray'd; dire was the noise
Of conflict.

John Milton

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,—never! never! never!

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

Then more fierce
The conflict grew; the din of arms, the yell
Of savage rage, the shriek of agony,
The groan of death, commingled in one sound
Of undistinguish'd horrors.

Robert Southey Madoc in Wales (1805)

If I were an American, as I am on Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!

William Pitt

Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Plutarch

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