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:
The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.
During a war, nobody ever showed up on time, except possibly the enemy.
If war breaks out, I will fight for Hitler since such a war would be against Jewry.
The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype.
The wages of courage is death, lad, but it’s the wages of everything else, too.
Every religion says war is evil, but one way or another they end up playing along.