Memorial Day Quotes

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.

Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.

All that was required of them (i.e. the brain-washed masses) was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

We cherish too, the Poppy red That grows on fields where valor led, It seems to signal to the skies That blood of heroes never dies.

Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of a free and undivided republic.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we - in a less final, less heroic way - be willing to give of ourselves.

When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

Freedom lies in being bold.

The brave die never, though they sleep in dust: Their courage nerves a thousand living men.

As a 22-year Army Veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and as a Civilian Advisor to the Afghan Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, I understand both the gravity of giving the order, and the challenge of carrying it out.

In valor there is hope.