War Veteran Quotes

As any war veteran will tell you, there is a vast difference between preparing for battle and actually facing battle for the first time.

As a Korean War veteran, I know firsthand and understand the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform.

One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you'd see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service.

I've shared meditation with a lot of hip-hop artists, inmates, and returning war veterans with PTSD, as well. I feel like this dharma, this service is part of my job.

"America's Cold War veterans deserve every honor we can bestow upon them for their hard work and dedication to keeping our nation safe,". "The Cold War Service Medal would allow military service members, veterans, and their families to receive the recognition and honor they rightfully deserve. I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure our veterans receive the support and care they and their families need. It's the least we can do as a grateful nation."

As any war veteran will tell you, there is a vast difference between preparing for battle and actually facing battle for the first time. You can be told that reading Victor Hugo will sap your will to live, but you can't understand what it means until you've read a few chapters and your eyes are glazed over and someone has to revive you with a defibrillator.

I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

To the Cold War veterans here, know that your steadfast efforts preserved a delicate balance, and, because of you, the global war that many feared never came to pass. We are thankful for you, as we are for all the veterans here with us.

. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere.

We make war that we may live in peace.

The Veteran's History Project, a nationwide volunteer effort to collect oral histories from America's war veterans, provides an avenue to do just that. Now in its fifth year, the Project has collected more than 40,000 individual stories.

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

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

Lord, bid war's trumpet cease; Fold the whole earth in peace.

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

There never was a good war or a bad revolution.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

As a Korean War Veteran I know too well the troubling nature of war. This is why I will always support a diplomatic answer before military intervention.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.

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.

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

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.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

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.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

I'm reading a bunch of fiction by Afghan and Iraq War veterans for a New Yorker piece. There hasn't been that much, but it's starting to come out, and some of the fiction is really good.

I am a Korean War veteran. I support our troops as much as anyone in this body, but I do so by advocating redeployment out of Iraq as soon as it can be safely done.

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.

**** the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: "Mother, what was war?"

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.