Famous Quotes & Sayings

Herbert Hoover

It was the transcendent fortitude and steadfastness of these men who in adversity and in suffering through the darkest hour of our history held faithful to an ideal. Here men endured that a nation might live.

Ernest Hemingway

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

George Washington

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

George Washington

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

George Orwell

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.

Gale Harold

Don't forget who your heroes are, what they mean to you, and why they mean that to you.

Eric Burdon

On Memorial Day, I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets, who started preaching peace, men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live.

George William Curtis

Patriotism is the vital condition of national permanence.

Martin Luther

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.

Tom DeLay

The architects of this wickedness will find no safe harbor in this world. We will chase our enemies to the furthest corners of this Earth. It must be war without quarter, pursuit without rest, victory without qualification

Marcus Garvey

Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.

Marcus Garvey

Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and realized the light of their own freedom.

Maya Angelou

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

Paddy Chayefsky

It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.

John Paul Jones

I have not yet begun to fight!

Nathan East

To our Soldiers: Thank you again and again, you will always matter, not only on this Memorial Day but every day!

Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.

George W. Bush

Their sacrifice was great, but not in vain. All Americans and every free nation on earth can trace their liberty to the white markers of places like Arlington National Cemetery. And may God keep us ever grateful.

George W. Bush

Looking across this field, we see the scale of heroism and sacrifice. All who are buried here understood their duty. All stood to protect America. And all carried with them memories of a family that they hoped to keep safe by their sacrifice.

James Carafano

Sometimes the enormity of war overwhelms the truth that all great struggles are just the sum of individual stories. Each is more than just the story of one soldier's service and sacrifice. Their service ripples across their families, friends and their communities. Memorial Day reminds us it is the noble sacrifice of many that makes us who we are.

Jack Straw

Holocaust Memorial Day is intended as an inclusive commemoration of all the individuals and communities who suffered as a result of the Holocaust - not only Jews, but also Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, political prisoners and dozens of ethnic and other minorities.

James Cromwell

I play an 89-year-old man whose wife has Alzheimer's in a movie called 'Still.' I play a World War II veteran, I acted with my son and it's called 'Memorial Day.'

James Gates Percival

Green sods are all their monument; and yet it tells A nobler history than pillared piles, Or the eternal pyramids.

Howard Zinn

Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.

Howard Zinn

Memorial Day will be celebrated ... by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.

Francis Marion Crawford

They fell, but o'er their glorious grave Floats free the banner of the cause they died to save.

Judith Martin

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, you may wear white shoes. Not before and not after. As a command, the White Shoe Edict should be clear and simple enough. Do not violate it. In a society in which everything else has become relative, a matter of how it makes you feel, a question between you and your conscience, and an opportunity for you to be really you, this is an absolute.

Susan Beth Pfeffer

Matt looked up kids from his high school class. Only three were listed as dead, but a bunch were listed as missing/presumed dead. As a test, he looked us up, but none of our names were on any of the lists. And that's how we know we're alive this Memorial Day.

Tennessee Williams

Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.

Robert Charles Winthrop

There are no points of the compass on the chart of true patriotism.

Michel de Montaigne

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

Philip James Bailey

Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.

Natasha Trethewey

I used to come out here every Fourth of July as a child to picnic and to swim on the island, to tour the fort and wander through it. And all of that time, I never knew anything about the presence of black soldiers on the island. And so, for me, this was a way of trying to tell another history, a lost or a forgotten or a little-known history about these black soldiers who played an important part in American history.” Trethewey said. Coincidentally, she was born “exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi celebrated the first Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1866.