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:
Courage and the goodness of one’s cause, unfortunately, do not always go hand in hand.
When you lose, Sis, the last war’s never over and done with.
Nothing like a wound infection to take the romance out of war.
We are watching the Germans closely; we are not forgetting what they did to us during the war.
Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge.
Out of that bungled, unwise war
An alp of unforgiveness grew.
Your trouble is, the Old Faith reinforces every wish to kill that war has roused in you.
What truly makes a man who he is? Is it the strength of his arms, or the courage of his soul?
Generals do not always run wars the way they would like to, nor the troops under them.