Quotes on Memorial Day

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.

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

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.

The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

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.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall with our English dead.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

This was the first Memorial Day [Monday, May 1st, 1865]. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is Black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.

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

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

We owe this freedom of choice and action to those men and women in uniform who have served this nation and its interests in time of need. In particular, we are forever indebted to those who have given their lives that we might be free.

The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we - in a less final, less heroic way - be willing to give of ourselves.

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 hope to keep safe by their sacrifice.

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.

Heroism is latent in every human soul - However humble or unknown, they (the veterans) have renounced what are accounted pleasures and cheerfully undertaken all the self-denials - privations, toils, dangers, sufferings, sicknesses, mutilations, life-long hurts and losses, death itself - for some great good, dimly seen but dearly held.

For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.