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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:

Patriotism: Judging disputes on the basis of place of residence.

Edward S. Herman Beyond Hypocrisy (1992)

Yes, I'm a military man, and as a military man I say that if peace fails and we want to end this war, we must bring the war to North Vietnam. In all possible ways, including landing.

Nguyễn Văn Thiệu

Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.

G. K. Chesterton

From the day Hitler came to power, I have felt that the democratic countries would have to face war... I cannot see any way of stopping Hitler and the other dictators except by force.

Ernest Bevin

We will do all we can to insure peace... but if war is imposed upon us we will be together shoulder to shoulder as in the last war to strive for the happiness of mankind.

Georgy Zhukov

I did not decide to become an officer to start a military career. I still wanted to be an agronomist and work in some remote corner of Russia after the war. I could not suppose that my country would change, and I would.

Aleksandr Vasilevsky

Self-possession without self-sufficiency. Courage without effrontery.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

The laws of war, do they say? As if war were not the destruction of all laws.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

War means the end of us all. Mankind is morally incapable of enduring another war, the horrors of which will surpass everything that has occurred hitherto. War would mean the end of Christian civilization.

Pierre Laval

It is normal for every person to feel fear, the important thing is that it is accompanied by courage. You must not let fear overwhelm you, otherwise it becomes an obstacle that prevents you from moving forward.

Paolo Borsellino

There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude...we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

Montesquieu Lettres Persanes (1721)

He was a graduate of West Point, a military academy which turned young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.

Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Self-fulfillment and Growth are some of the most courageous acts on this planet

Frances Bean Cobain

I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced wars; it is the intolerant spirit animating that which believed itself in the ascendant.

Montesquieu Lettres Persanes (1721)

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

Thomas Sowell

Only the very courageous will be able to keep alive the spirit of individualism and dissent which gave birth to this nation, nourished it as an infant, and carried it through its severest tests upon the attainment of its maturity.

John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage (1956)

I take no pleasure in being Right in my dark predictions about the fate of our military intervention in the heart of the Muslim world. It is immensely depressing to me. Nobody likes to be betting against the Home team.

Hunter S. Thompson

there is no war not based on lies,
there is no infamy alive without
its kindred kin, deceit.

L. Ron Hubbard

People say to me all the time, "You have no fear." I tell them, "No, that's not true. I'm scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I'm a courageous person because I'm a scared person."

Ronda Rousey

The misappropriation of resources provided by the government for weapons means the Nigerian military is unable to beat Boko Haram.

Muhammadu Buhari

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