It is said that God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.
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:
I never cease urging peace, which, however unfair, is better than the justest war in the world.
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
Nationalism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject.
Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.
We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag, and keep step to the music of the Union.
Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise the King born of all England.
War, no matter what our intentions may be, brings suffering and tragedy.
There 's but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war.
There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
There may be a hundred stances and sword positions, but you win with just one.
A serjeant is a soldier with a halbert, and a drummer is a soldier with a drum.