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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:

The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.

Gene Roddenberry

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.

William Ralph Inge Outspoken Essays (1919)

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh North to the Orient (1935)

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.

Herbert Hoover

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings

George Will

The fundamental of war has always been dehumanizing the enemy, seeing him as a soulless animal.

Robert J. Sawyer Factoring Humanity (1998)

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom.

Rollo May Man’s Search for Himself (1953)

Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values.

Rollo May The Courage to Create (1975)

Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.

Rollo May The Courage to Create (1975)

Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Dickens Sketches by Boz (1836)

I’ll tell you, though, this whole business of war would be a hell of a lot more fun if you didn’t get shot.

Harry Turtledove Southern Victory (1997)

War puts burdens on people without caring whether they are ready for them or not.

Stephen R. Donaldson The Illearth War (1977)

War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.

Don DeLillo End Zone (1972)

I'm iron. I lasted through ten years of war, and now I can last through this. It's true, it's not good for the nerves.

Sepp Dietrich

Germany could not win this war because it was in league with the devil. This war would not have ended without revolution.

Erich von dem Bach

War is sweet to those who have no experience of it,
but the experienced man trembles exceedingly at heart on its approach.

Pindar

Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,—
The loving are the daring.

Bayard Taylor The Song of the Camp (1856)

If you don’t offer people a positive, uplifting nationalism, they will grab the nasty one. History and recent events have shown us that.

David Brooks

Conquering evil, not the opponent, is the essence of swordsmanship.

Yagyū Munenori Behold the Second Horseman (2005)

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.

George Washington Farewell Address (1796)

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