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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:

Churchill must not forget that the Italians have nothing more to lose and they possess a courage of despair.

Alessandro Pavolini

Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it:
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.

Samuel Rogers

That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world.

Poul Anderson

Ori supposed there were as many unspeakable stories as there were men come back from war.

China Miéville Iron Council (2004)

My God, we'd better start talking sense before it is too late. We need every able-bodied, smart patriot to help us win this war.

Alan K. Simpson

To those who think I am suggesting that we have a war between the sexes, I say: but we've always had one.

Phyllis Chesler Women and Madness (1972)

Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable, let us activate the different and save the honor of the name.

Jean-François Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977)

The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity.

Emmanuel Levinas Totality and Infinity (1961)

I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world.

Elon Musk

The cost in human lives of every armed conflict is staggering, but the economic cost of wars can continue for generations.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

War is the highest summit of human achievement; it is the natural, the final stage in the historical development of humanity.

Hans von Seeckt

War, dreadful war, and Tiber flood
I see incarnadined with blood.

John Conington The Aeneid of Virgil (1866)

Thou too take courage, wealth despise,
And fit thee to ascend the skies,
Nor be a poor man's courtesies
Rejected or disdained.

John Conington The Aeneid of Virgil (1866)

Now we have the prospect of a religious war on our hands, with the attendant proliferation of “heresies” and two separate but equal inquisitions.

George Alec Effinger What Entropy Means to Me (1972)

Soldiers usually are close students of tactics, but rarely are they students of strategy and practically never of war.

Bernard Brodie

I once thought the greatest sin of war was violence. It isn't. The greatest sin is it requires good men to become practical.

Pierce Brown Dark Age (2019)

To make war, you had to be filled with love, with a vehement passion, exalted, intoxicated, otherwise the whole thing was inhuman and absurd.

Gabrielle Roy The Tin Flute (1945)

Circumstances make the hero, but everyday courage makes the righteous man.

Padre Pio

Go capture the fort which you could not win by war, but now we've left it at our own will.

Balbhadra Kunwar

If you're a father of sons, think of a man you'd like your boys to emulate, then be that man--exemplify his selflessness, fidelity, courage.

Robert P. George

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