Skip to content

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:

There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.

J. William Fulbright The Arrogance of Power (1966)

The state monopolizes violence by calling its critics “violent”. [...] Hence, we should be wary about those who claim that violence is necessary to curb or check violence; those who praise the forces of law, including the police and the prisons, as the final arbiters. To oppose violence is to understand that violence does not always take the form of the blow.

Judith Butler The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind (2020)

It is possible, in the interests of a false religion (such as Nationalism or Fascism) to avert one's eyes from the plain fact of human brotherhood; but the fact stubbornly remains, and we ignore it at our peril. We are all in the same boat, and we live in the shadow of a common doom.

Gerald Bullett

Perhaps the central question in our understanding of nationalism is the role of the past in the creation of the present. … For nationalists themselves, the role of the past is clear and unproblematic. The nation was always there, indeed it is part of the natural order, even when it was submerged in the hearts of its members.

Anthony D. Smith Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations (1994)

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! — incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

Mark Twain

To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death.

Frederick William Robertson

He did look far
Into the service of the time, and was
Discipled of the bravest; he lasted long;
But on us both did haggish age steal on
And wore us out of act.

William Shakespeare

Every soldier in every army is taught first off to be neat and clean, to keep his clothes in good repair, his buttons sewed on and his shoes polished, his face and hands and body washed, his beard shaved. He is respectful to his officers and stands at attention when he is addressed; he moves with precision about his business, walking as a soldier should, head up, chin in, arms at his sides.

Alvah Bessie Men in Battle: A Story of American in Spain (1939)

It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.

Søren Kierkegaard

There is a contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of the blows and clamor of opposing forces. There is no honorable fighting for a man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as ready to be struck as to strike for her.

Josiah Gilbert Holland

O Chryste, it is a grief for me to telle,
How manie a noble erle and valrous knyghte
In fyghtynge for Kynge Harrold noblie fell,
Al sleyne on Hastyng's field in bloudie fyghte.

Thomas Chatterton

Piers Morgan: You're always very keen to take a view, even if they're unproven, that is anti-American. You're never quite so keen to take a view that is anti-dictator. ...

Jeffrey Sachs

The lines of red are lines of blood, nobly and unselfishly shed by men who loved the liberty of their fellowmen more than they loved their own lives and fortunes. God forbid that we should have to use the blood of America to freshen the color of the flag. But if it should ever be necessary, that flag will be colored once more, and in being colored will be glorified and purified.

Woodrow Wilson

War is obsolete. It could never have been done before. Only ten years ago... technology reached the point where it could be done. Since then the invisible technological-capability revolution has made it ever easier so to do.

Buckminster Fuller Critical Path (1981)

Dr. King’s policy was, if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption. In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.

Stokely Carmichael

I grew up in war-torn Iraq, and I believe that there are two sides of wars and we've only seen one side of it. We only talk about one side of it. But there's another side that I have witnessed as someone who lived in it and someone who ended up working in it.

Zainab Salbi

As we give thanks for the Earth, will we live in such a way that the Earth can be grateful for us? (2015)

Robin Wall Kimmerer

If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.

Howard Zinn Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991)

Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,
With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?
And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout?
And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?

Thomas Babington Macaulay The Battle of Naseby (1824)

He says, “No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They’re not affordable things. No prince ever says, ‘This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.’ You enter into one and it uses up all the money you’ve got, and then it breaks you and bankrupts you.”

Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall (2009)

Related topics