Last Updated: November 22, 2022 by Quote.cc Team
Veteran’s Day is a federal holiday in the United States observed annually on November 11 to honor our military veterans for their service to the country. It is a day to salute our heroes for their sacrifices for our nation. Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day. At the same time, Memorial Day honors those who died while in military service, and Veterans Day honors all American veterans, living and dead.
The origin of Veterans Day can be traced back to World War I. The Armistice with Germany, which formally ended the war, went into effect on the 11th hour of the 11th Day of the 11th month of 1918. In November 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. Congress subsequently passed a resolution on June 4, 1926, urging all state governors to observe the new holiday. November 11 formally became a national holiday in 1938. On June 1, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill changing the holiday’s name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. It became a day to honor American veterans of all wars. That is the origin of Veterans Day.
As a country and as individuals, we need to honor the heroes who make our world better. And as a nation, there’s no one more deserving of our gratitude and respect than those who have served in the military —which is why Veterans Day is so incredibly significant.
Let’s all take a moment on this Veterans Day to honor those ordinary people who have done something extraordinary so that we may all enjoy the freedom we treasure. Thank you, veterans! Here is the 100 best Veterans Day quotes to show the gratitude and respect military personnel deserve for their strength and sacrifice.
100 best Veterans Day Quotes
“Either war is obsolete or men are.” – R. Buckminster Fuller
“We will not tire, We will not falter, We will not fail.” – George W. Bush
“Thank you for the sacrifices you and your families are making. Our Vietnam Veterans have taught us that no matter what our positions may be on policy, as Americans and patriots, we must support all of our soldiers with our thoughts and our prayers.” – Zack Wamp
“I have long believed that sacrifice is the pinnacle of patriotism.” – Bob Riley
“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” – Maya Angelou
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” – Jimmy Carter
“The nicest veterans…the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“America’s Veterans have served their country with the belief that democracy and freedom are ideals to be upheld around the world.” – John Doolittle
“The highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country.” – George S. Patton Jr.
“We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.” – George Orwell
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form or a readiness to die.” – G. K. Chesterton
“It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.” – Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.
“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.” – Thucydides
“The patriot’s blood is the seed of freedom’s tree.” – Thomas Campbell
“We come, not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them.” – Francis A. Walker
“Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says ‘Bad war, good soldier.’ Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.” – Max Cleland
“The young patriots now returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other deployments worldwide are joining the ranks of veterans to whom America owes an immense debt of Gratitude.” – Steve Buyer
“The only war is the war you fought in. Every veteran knows that.” – Allan Keller
“Fallen heroes represent the character of a nation who has a long history of patriotism and honor.” – Michael N. Castle
“Honoring the sacrifices many have made for our country in the name of freedom and democracy is the very foundation of Veterans Day.” – Charles B. Rangel
“The hero is the man dedicated to the creation and / or defense of reality-conforming, life-promoting values.” – Andrew Bernstein
“America’s Veterans have served their country with the belief that democracy and freedom are ideals to be upheld around the world.” – John Doolittle
“The most persistent sound which reverberates through men’s history is the beating of war drums.” – Arthur Koestler
“America’s veterans embody the ideals upon which America was founded more than 229 years ago.” – Steve Buyer
“Never was so much owed by so many to so few.” – Winston Churchill
“The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country.” – General George S. Patton
“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.” – Mark Twain
“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“My heroes are those who risk their lives every day to protect our world and make it a better place—police, firefighters, and members of our armed forces.” – Sidney Sheldon
“There is nothing nobler than risking your life for your country.” – Nick Lampson
“We don’t know them all, but we owe them all.” – Unknown
“The willingness of America’s veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude.” – Jeff Miller
“In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans’ organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.” – Daniel Webster
“Without heroes, we are all plain people, and don’t know how far we can go.”
“I think there is one higher office than President and I would call that patriot.” – Gary Hart
“Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as best he can, the same cause.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Here men endured that a nation might live.” – Herbert Hoover
“Civilians seldom understand that soldiers, once impressed into war, will forever take it for the ordinary state of the world, with all else illusion. The former soldier assumes that when time weakens the dream of civilian life and its supports pull away, he will revert to the one state that will always hold his heart. He dreams of war and remembers it in quiet times when he might otherwise devote himself to different things, and he is ruined for the peace. What he has seen is as powerful and mysterious as death itself, and yet he has not died, and he wonders why.” – Mark Helprin
“Those that die for a good cause hover as a cloud of witnesses over the nation.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.” – Michel de Montaigne
“It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.” – General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
“It’s about how we treat our veterans every single day of the year. It’s about making sure they have the care they need and the benefits that they’ve earned when they come home. It’s about serving all of you as well as you’ve served the United States of America.” – Barack Obama
“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country, can change it.” – Barrack Obama
“Well, look at what people are doing for returned veterans now. The wounded warriors. They’re working hard to make the wounded veterans feel that they are loved and welcomed home, unlike Vietnam. It was not a very kind, gentle world then. I think we are kinder and gentler.” – Barbara Bush
“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” – José Narosky
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” – G.K. Chesterton
“On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation!” – Thomas William Parsons
“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.” – Lee Greenwood
“The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.” – Elmer Davis
“Our veterans accepted the responsibility to defend America and uphold our values when duty called.” – Bill Shuster
“The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.” – Patrick Henry
“America’s veterans deserve the very best health care because they’ve earned it.” – Jim Ramstad
“Who kept the faith and fought the fight; The glory theirs, the duty ours.” – Wallace Bruce
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” – Joseph Campbell
“Lord, bid war’s trumpet cease; fold the whole Earth in peace.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
“On this Veterans Day, let us remember the service of our veterans, and let us renew our national promise to fulfill our sacred obligations to our veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much so that we can live free.” – Dan Lipinski
“America without her soldiers would be like God without his angels.” – Claudia Pemberton
“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.” – Harry S. Truman
“As a former veteran, I understand the needs of veterans, and have been clear—we will work together, stand together with the Administration, but we will also question their policies when they shortchange veterans and military retirees.” – Solomon Ortiz
“But the freedom that they fought for, and the country grand they wrought for, Is their monument to-day, and for aye.” – Thomas Dunn English
“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.” – President George Washington
“Better than honor and glory, and History’s iron pen, was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow men.” – Richard Watson Gilder
“We remember those who were called upon to give all a person can give, and we remember those who were prepared to make that sacrifice if it were demanded of them in the line of duty, though it never was. Most of all, we remember the devotion and gallantry with which all of them ennobled their nation as they became champions of a noble cause.” – Ronald Reagan
“We can’t equate spending on veterans with spending on defense. Our strength is not just in the size of our defense budget, but in the size of our hearts, in the size of our gratitude for their sacrifice. And that’s not just measured in words or gestures.” – Jennifer Granholm
“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay. But we can honor their sacrifice, and we must.” – Barack Obama
“Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world, but the Marines don’t have that problem.” – Ronald Reagan
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
“Never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchill
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with lots of pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.” – Woodrow Wilson
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.” – George S. Patton Jr.
“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” – Bob Dylan
“Perfect valor is to behave, without witnesses, as one would act were all the world watching.” – Francois de la Rochefoucauld
“Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.” – Billy Graham
“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.” – Ronald Reagan
“Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!” – Sun Tzu
“The brave die never, though they sleep in dust: Their courage nerves a thousand living men.” – Minot J. Savage
“In valor there is hope.” – Publius Cornelius Tacitus