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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:

Oh, thou dread sword, oft stain'd with heroes' gore,
Thou awful terror of the prostrate Moor,
What rage could aim thee at a female breast,
Unarm'd, by softness and by love possess'd!

Luís de Camões Os Lusíadas (1572)

Folly such as yours,
Grac'd with a sword, and worthier of a fan,
Has made what enemies could ne'er have done.

William Cowper The Task (1785)

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Jesus

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade;
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.

William Cowper The Task (1785)

A war today or tomorrow, if it led to nuclear war, would not be like any war in history.

John F. Kennedy

Such is the essence of valor: an unthinking moment, a spark along the spinal nerves, predetermined by the sum total of everything you have ever done, wished to do or not to do, and wish you had done, or hadn’t, and then comes the pain.

Roger Zelazny The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains. ’Tis the same with common natures:
Use ’em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.

Aaron Hill

No wars are unintended or 'accidental'. What is often unintended is the length and bloodiness of the war.

Geoffrey Blainey The Causes of War (1973)

War and peace are not separate compartments. Peace depends on threats and force; often peace is the crystallisation of past force.

Geoffrey Blainey The Causes of War (1973)

You gotta remember that in war, you’re not deciding between the bad thing to and the good thing. You’re choosing between the bad and the worse. And you can’t control the shit that happens after you choose.

Charles E. Gannon Trial by Fire (2014)

What argufies pride and ambition?
Soon or late death will take us in tow:
Each bullet has got its commission,
And when our time's come we must go.

Charles Dibdin

The gods are on the side of the stronger.

Tacitus

Brave men don't belong to any one country. I respect bravery wherever I see it.

Harry S. Truman Truman (1993)

God's soldier be he!
Had I as many sons as I have hairs,
I would not wish them to a fairer death:
And so his knell is knoll'd.

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1605)

We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to perform than the Great Asiatic Power. We, like the Japanese, can only fulfil it by the sword.

Friedrich von Bernhardi Germany and the Next War (1911)

The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force.

Robert A. Heinlein

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.

George Bernard Shaw

There are many different voices and languages; but there is but one voice of the peoples when you are declared to be the true "Father of your country."

Martial

I, serial number 30743, Lieutenant General in reserves Yitzhak Rabin, a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces and in the army of peace, I, who have sent armies into fire and soldiers to their death, say today: We sail onto a war which has no casualties, no wounded, no blood nor suffering. It is the only war which is a pleasure to participate in — the war for peace.

Yitzhak Rabin

Courage remains as important in the legal profession today as it was then. Throughout our history lawyers who have made the greatest mark on this country haven't done so because they were smarter or were born into better families or held more important positions; it was because they were willing to stand firm for justice in the face of immense pressure and often at grave personal costs.

Neil Gorsuch A Republic, If You Can Keep It (2019)

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