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 must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.
Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.
The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he [Saddam Hussein] is in power.
If we have a thousand bamboo spears, there's nothing to worry about a war with the Soviet Union.
Without the military help of the black freedman, the war against the South could not have been won.