Top 100 Quotes About Memorial Day
#1. 137 years later, Memorial Day remains one of America's most cherished patriotic observances. The spirit of this day has not changed - it remains a day to honor those who died defending our freedom and democracy.
Doc Hastings
#2. Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
Andrew Bacevich
#3. Memorial Day weekend is the time we drink up all the booze and eat up all the grub that the soldiers didn't get to. It's important.
Karl Welzein
#4. While tributes to Americans who had lost their lives in battle had been held in a number of towns across the nation, one of the more well-known stories about the beginnings of Memorial Day is the story about General John Logan.
John Linder
#5. On Memorial Day, I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation, and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program.
Danica Patrick
#6. 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.
Jack Straw
#7. 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
#8. Spare the rod and spoil the Memorial Day rotisserie.
Brian Spellman
#9. I am the living death, a Memorial Day on wheels. I am your Yankee Doodle Dandy, your John Wayne come home, your Fourth of July firecracker exploding in the grave.
Ron Kovic
#10. On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes
and I see many of them in the audience here today
our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.
Barack Obama
#11. 'Memorial Day' is about 'spring break' girls-gone-wild culture which is the seedy underbelly of our American Puritanism, the inverse side of the coin. It's also about how we forcefully exported that culture and then pretended to not know what we were doing.
Josh Fox
#12. Ceremonies are important. But our gratitude has to be more than visits to the troops, and once-a-year Memorial Day ceremonies. We honor the dead best by treating the living well.
Jennifer Granholm
#13. Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.
Natasha Trethewey
#14. My name is Natasha Trethewey, and I was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966, exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi celebrated the first Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1866.
Natasha Trethewey
#15. 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 Cromwell
#16. In our observances this Memorial Day, we honor the brave Americans who paid the highest price for their commitment to the ideals of peace, freedom, and justice. Our debt to them can be paid only by our own recommitment to preserving those same ideals.
Ronald Reagan
#17. I'll be careful."
He looked at her.
"I promise."
"Call me if you need me."
"Cosmo."
He turned to look at her.
"It does go both ways. I don't want to get a call from Tom Paoletti and Decker every Memorial Day.
Suzanne Brockmann
#18. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.
Ronald Reagan
#19. Memorial Day this year is especially important as we are reminded almost daily of the great sacrifices that the men and women of the Armed Services make to defend our way of life.
Robin Hayes
#20. I am going to take something I learned over in Israel. Their Independence Day is preceded the 24 hours before with Memorial Day, so it gives them a chance to serve and reflect and then celebrate. I am going to try to start that tradition here in America.
Glenn Beck
#22. 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.
Eric Burdon
#23. We should not take a Memorial Day recess until we pass a proper memorial for the slain students in Littleton, Colorado, and other school gun tragedies.
John Conyers
#24. Nowadays, many Americans have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At cemeteries across the country, the graves of the fallen are sadly ignored, and worse, neglected.
Allen West
#25. 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.
Paddy Chayefsky
#26. While there are towns and cities still planning Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some think the day is for honoring anyone who has died, not just those fallen in service to our country.
Allen West
#27. As America celebrates Memorial Day, we pay tribute to those who have given their lives in our nation's wars.
John M. McHugh
#28. 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.
Susan Beth Pfeffer
#29. On Memorial Day we come together as Americans to let these families and veterans know that they are not alone. We give thanks for those who sacrificed everything so that we could be free. And we commit ourselves to upholding the ideals for which so many patriots have fought and died.
Barack Obama
#30. Happy Memorial Day! Thank you to all our service men and women past and present. You are not forgotten!
Courteney Cox
#31. To our Soldiers: Thank you again and again, you will always matter, not only on this Memorial Day but every day!
Nathan East
#32. There's no greater city between Memorial Day and Labor Day than Chicago. It's the single best summer city in America.
Michael Wilbon
#33. I dedicate my love and whole heart this Memorial Day to my Dad, a soldier, who like many others, suffers in silence with pride and honor.
Pink
#34. If Americans can transform Memorial Day, technically a remembrance of all our war dead ever, into the official kickoff of summer, we can handle adapting one demoralizing battle into a wholesome, chipper get-together.
Sarah Vowell
#36. From 1971 onwards, the Memorial Day holiday was officially observed on the last Monday in May and became the unofficial start of the summer, with barbecues, blockbuster movie openings and mattress sales.
Allen West
#37. Peace to each manly soul that sleepeth; Rest to each faithful eye that weepeth ...
Thomas Moore
#38. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.
James Bryce
#39. Their own souls rose and cried
Alarum when they heard the sudden wail
Of stricken freedom and along the gale
Saw her eternal banner quivering wide.
John Le Gay Brereton
#40. Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.
William Shakespeare
#41. Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.
Samuel Johnson
#42. To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something.
Criss Jami
#43. The average American is nothing if not patriotic.
Herbert Croly
#44. While we tediously check our weaponry before entering into battle, do we check our hearts? For without exception, that is the greatest weapon of all.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#45. It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.
Robert E.Lee
#48. But fame is theirs - and future days
On pillar'd brass shall tell their praise;
Shall tell - when cold neglect is dead -
"These for their country fought and bled."
Philip Freneau
#49. I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.
Alexander Smith
#50. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?
Henry Ward Beecher
#51. They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.
Philip Freneau
#53. Green sods are all their monument; and yet it tells A nobler history than pillared piles, Or the eternal pyramids.
James Gates Percival
#54. There is nothing nobler than risking your life for your country.
Nick Lampson
#55. There's intense national feeling in America that could be called patriotism.
Michael Ignatieff
#56. So as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.
Tacitus
#58. Over all our happy country - over all our Nation spread, Is a band of noble heroes - is our Army of the Dead.
Will Carleton
#59. Fold him in his country's stars.
Roll the drum and fire the volley!
What to him are all our wars,
What but death bemocking folly?
George Henry Boker
#60. Ask not what I can do for you. Ask what you can do for me
Jerry Seinfeld
#61. The heroes of Flight 93 won the first battle in the War on Terror, and they should never be forgotten.
Jim Ramstad
#62. And they who for their country die shall fill an honored grave, for glory lights the soldier's tomb, and beauty weeps the brave.
Joseph Rodman Drake
#64. True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.
Robert Reich
#65. They, and we, are the legacies of an unbroken chain of proud men and women who served their country with honor, who waged war so that we might know peace, who braved hardship so that we might know opportunity, who paid the ultimate price so that we might know freedom.
Barack Obama
#66. There were big geysers coming up where the shells were landing and there were bodies floating, face down, face up.
Elliot Johnson
#67. Peace is the real and right memorial for those who have died in war.
Richard M. Nixon
#68. Presented memorial to [Constitutional Convention] committee on sufferage. Was very courteously treated. We all felt it a great day in the history of Utah. The committee informed us they had passed on W[oman] S[uffrage] being ten to five in favor.
Ruth May Fox
#69. I can't claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don't know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as ours does: Does that flag still wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? That is what we must all ask.
Ronald Reagan
#70. The atrocities of war are only overshadowed by the heroism of their dead.
Todd Stocker
#71. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#72. No day shall erase you from the memory of time
Virgil
#73. They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#74. Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#75. 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
And I'll proudly stand up next to him to defend her still today,
Cuz there aint no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA
Lee Greenwood
#76. One should never allow chaos to develop in order to avoid going to war, because one does not avoid a war but instead puts it off to his disadvantage
Niccolo Machiavelli
#77. Missing someone is the reverberating echo of everything beautiful about her - her laugh, her song, her touch, her smell, the power of her words, and the constant shadow that lingers on as her perfect image in your memory.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#78. The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat! But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red, The starry lives that keep its field alight.
Rupert Hughes
#79. The willingness of America's veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude.
Jeff Miller
#80. America is hope. It is compassion. It is excellence. It is valor.
Paul Tsongas
#81. I say to our enemies: We are coming. God may have mercy on you, but we won't
John McCain
#82. Life hangs as nothing in the scale against dear Liberty!
Lucy Larcom
#83. 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
#84. If I have become so pathetically dulled that I hold freedom as my right and the privileges of liberty as my due, I can stand beside the stilled graves of a thousand soldiers fallen in defense of freedom and not feel a thing. And my most solemn prayer is that I will never be this.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#86. 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.
Moina Michael
#87. We must be prepared to make the same heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war.
Albert Einstein
#88. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the
living; tears for the dead.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#90. 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
#91. We will not allow this day of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial to go without somebody going to jail.
Cornel West
#92. We send cruise missiles and then we think everything's all right or we try to bring them to trial. My friends, this time they've gone too far. This time we're serious. This time we won't quit until they are gone, completely gone from the face of the earth
John McCain
#93. If the baser instinct of rampant self-preservation adamantly refuses to surrender itself to the infinitely greater call of self-sacrifice, in attempting to save our lives we will have in reality completely destroyed our lives.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#94. Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay, but we can honor their sacrifice.
Barack Obama
#97. They do not need our praise. They do not need that our admiration should sustain them. There is no immortality that is safer than theirs. We come not for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drink at the same springs of inspiration from which they themselves drank.
Woodrow Wilson
#98. 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
Elijah Muhammad
#99. Knights of the spirit; warriors in the cause Of justice absolute 'twixt man and man.
Richard Watson Gilder
#100. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
Douglas MacArthur
