Every November 11th, America pauses for the veterans — the men and women who put on the uniform, stood a post, and came home carrying the weight of what they did for the rest of us. Veterans Day is not Memorial Day; it is not only about the fallen. It is a day to look the living veteran in the eye and say, simply and directly, thank you. That thanks has been voiced across a century by presidents and poets, generals and songwriters, and some of their words have become part of the nation’s memory.
This collection of veterans day quotes gathers 47 of the strongest lines on the subject — on honor and service, on sacrifice and remembrance, on courage and gratitude, on the freedom all of it was for. Every attribution here has been checked against a real source: presidential proclamations, inaugural addresses, published poems, and recorded speeches. Quote pages on the internet recycle the same misattributed lines year after year, so where the record was murky, I corrected it rather than repeating it.
Use these lines however November 11th calls for them: read one at a ceremony, tuck one into a card or a toast, post one alongside a photo of the veteran in your life, or simply sit with a few in silence. However you honor the day, let the words remind you of the people behind them — ordinary men and women who answered when it mattered.
10 Honor & Service Veterans Day Quotes
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
A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.
John F. Kennedy
Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.
Douglas MacArthur
The willingness of America’s veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude.
George W. Bush
Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause.
Abraham Lincoln
Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor ALL those who served honorably in the military — in wartime or peacetime.
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory.
Woodrow Wilson
Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.
Benjamin Disraeli
I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
Christopher Reeve
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10 Sacrifice & Remembrance Veterans Day Quotes
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
Laurence Binyon
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon
When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today.
John Maxwell Edmonds
Let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.
Abraham Lincoln
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
The Bible, John 15:13
Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
Douglas MacArthur
Here dead lie we because we did not choose To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
A.E. Housman
I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade.
Alan Seeger
When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?
George Canning
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
José Narosky
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9 Courage & Bravery Veterans Day Quotes
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
G.K. Chesterton
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
George S. Patton
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Winston Churchill
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
Michel de Montaigne
The brave die never, though they sleep in dust: Their courage nerves a thousand living men.
Minot J. Savage
We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
Will Rogers
The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.
Thucydides
Freedom lies in being bold.
Robert Frost
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9 Gratitude & Thanks Veterans Day Quotes
We must commit this day and every day to serving you as well as you’ve served us.
Barack Obama
Through their commitment to freedom, America’s veterans have lifted millions of lives and made our country and the world more secure.
George W. Bush
Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it.
John F. Kennedy
This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.
Elmer Davis
The soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
Douglas MacArthur
Veterans know better than anyone else the price of freedom, for they’ve suffered the scars of war. We can offer them no better tribute than to protect what they have won for us.
Ronald Reagan
Home of the free, because of the brave.
Unknown
We honor your service. We are forever grateful.
Barack Obama
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9 Freedom & Patriotism Veterans Day Quotes
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.
John F. Kennedy
And 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 patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.
Thomas Campbell
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
Abraham Lincoln
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.
Ronald Reagan
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row.
John McCrae
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. (It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.)
Horace
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Happy, thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who have contributed any thing, who have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabrick of Freedom and Empire on the broad basis of Independency.
George Washington
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Keep this page for November 11th and every day after. The veterans among us asked for nothing in return except that we remember what their service bought — so thank them, listen to their stories, and carry these 47 voices with you into the season of gratitude ahead.
