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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.

Random quote on Veterans Day

Most quoted on veterans day:

To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war.

L. K. Samuels

In the ebb and flow of battle there are usually only brief flashes of bravery before the brave become the dead.

Tade Thompson One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sunlight in Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (2013)

Violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.

Errico Malatesta

In war there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur farewell address to Congress (1951)

And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.

William Shakespeare Henry V (1599)

Greedy men say "More!" to war
Sitting together telling stories
could change that but who will take the time?

Naomi Shihab Nye Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

E. F. Schumacher

"Thank God, I — I also — am an American!"

Daniel Webster On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843)

The atomic bomb had dwarfed the international issues to complete insignificance.

H. G. Wells The World Set Free (1913)

Violence creates nothing but violence, no matter what we call it and what the excuse. And so it goes, down all the centuries.

Michael Moorcock The Steel Tsar (1981)

A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.

Seneca the Younger

“We’d never—” Alexander began, but he didn’t finish the sentence. When you were in a war, who could say what you might be driven to do?

Harry Turtledove Southern Victory (1997)

They’d kill him or he’d kill them. War reduced everything to a brutal simplicity.

Harry Turtledove Southern Victory (1997)

Consult the honor of religion more, and your personal safety less. Is it for the honor of religion (think you) that Christians should be as timorous as hares to start at every sound?

John Flavel Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

John Hospers Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow (1971)

The Essence of War is Violence. Moderation in War is Imbecility.

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher Records (1919)

Gratitude and love. He wasn’t the only one who lived with the pretty lie that one must necessarily lead to the other.

Esther Friesner Sphynxes Wild (1989)

In this country it is found necessary now and then to put an admiral to death in order to encourage the others.

Voltaire

Always open all gates and roads to your enemies, and rather make for them a bridge of silver, to get rid of them.

François Rabelais

The love of arms and the mad wickedness of war are raging.

Virgil

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