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.
Most quoted on veterans day:
We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.
Sadly, there is a fine line between patriotism and paranoia.
Among man’s strange undertakings, war stood clearly forth as the strangest.
The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government.
History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.
To Mankind
And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all.
There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.
Patriotism requires less and less of making the eagle scream, but more and more of making him think.
War is righteous or unrighteous according as it is opportune or inopportune.