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:
People not only live by symbols, but die by them, as wars of religion and nationalism attest.
Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.
It is untrue that I or anybody else in Germany wanted war in 1939.
The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.
Those who would wage war successfully must not wait upon events but anticipate them.
Beware, said I, lest, seeking to be rid of war, you find a master.