Holocaust Memorial Day Quotes

It takes solidarity and generosity of spirit to build a society in which anyone can feel safe. Empathy can be hard to find, especially for people who look or sound different, or believe different things to us. But when we allow ourselves to be pitted against each other, and to be ruled by the meaner emotions, we dig our own graves alongside those of the people we abandon. It's only when we understand our essential commonality that we can protect ourselves: not as individual humans, but as members of an indivisible whole. ~ William Sieghart

The famous speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, included the sentence: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Today's left-wing, through identity politics, affirmative-action policies, and hiring quotas, has shattered that dream. ~ Tammy Bruce

For the love of country they accepted death. ~ James A. Garfield

Some of the shells brought my heart into my mouth; lying there waiting for them was intolerable. I was sure I was going to be blown to pieces. ~ Hervey Allen

Legend has it that Walter was taking a walk with his father one day and passed by a church where Oswald directed his young son's attention to a memorial. "There's a name you will never remember," Oswald commented as he kept walking. Walter paused to read: ~ Patricia Cornwell

"Dead upon the field of glory,"
Hero fit for song and story. ~ John R. Thompson

As a 22-year Army Veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and as a Civilian Advisor to the Afghan Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, I understand both the gravity of giving the order, and the challenge of carrying it out. ~ Allen West

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

To our Soldiers: Thank you again and again, you will always matter, not only on this Memorial Day but every day! ~ Nathan East

America is hope. It is compassion. It is excellence. It is valor. ~ Paul Tsongas

And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Knights of the spirit; warriors in the cause Of justice absolute 'twixt man and man. ~ Richard Watson Gilder

There were big geysers coming up where the shells were landing and there were bodies floating, face down, face up. ~ Elliot Johnson

At Concerned Veterans for America, we've made the case that the defense budget could be targeted for spending reform, but in a targeted fashion that genuinely changes unsustainable spending trajectories while preserving U.S. defense capacity. ~ Pete Hegseth

Kingsley could 'do' the sound of a brass band approaching on a foggy day. He could become the Metropolitan line train entering Edgware Road station. He could be four wrecked tramps coughing in a bus shelter (this was very demanding and once led to heart palpitations). To create the hiss and crackle of a wartime radio broadcast delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was for him scant problem (a tape of it, indeed, was played at his memorial meeting, where I was hugely honored to be among the speakers). The pièce de résistance, an attempt by British soldiers to start up a frozen two-ton truck on a windy morning 'somewhere in Germany,' was for special occasions only. One held one's breath as Kingsley emitted the first screech of the busted starting-key. His only slightly lesser vocal achievement - of a motor-bike yelling in mechanical agony - once caused a man who had just parked his own machine in the street to turn back anxiously and take a look. The old boy's imitation of an angry dog barking the words 'fuck off' was note-perfect. ~ Christopher Hitchens

On what rests the hope of the republic? One country, one language, one flag! ~ Alexander Henry

Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me....It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high up in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in, and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and lo ~ Charles Dickens

Who sows virtue reaps honor. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Remembering our loved ones is breathing life into their fading images, that we might once more see their faces and pass along a tearful "I miss you. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

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

I watched American TV shows: Starsky & Hutch, Dallas, Rockford Files, Bonanza. And for many summers growing up, I worked on my aunt and uncle's farm in East Anglia. Down the street was an American cemetery for the Second World War, and every Memorial Day an American bomber would fly over that cemetery and drop rose petals. ~ Scott Raab

I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the
living; tears for the dead. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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

So three days before the millennium, Bianca called. "D'ya wanna go to the White House with Trisha and me?" By Trisha, she meant country singer Trisha Yearwood, whose record label, MCA, she'd recently been hired to work at. "When would that be, exactly?" I asked. "For that Millennium Concert at the Lincoln Memorial. There's a party at the White House after and all." She always talked like she was chewing gum between words. "They're flying us there in a private jet. Ya don't need to write about it. Just come as Trisha's guest. It'll be fun." "Shit, I'm supposed to go ice-skating with some guys who think the world's going to end. Give me a day to figure things out and I'll get right back to you. ~ Neil Strauss

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. ~ Elie Wiesel

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

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

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. ~ John McCrae

Today, the men from that meeting are frozen in photographs.
They are immortal, or rather: they must never be forgotten.
The villa has become a place of memorial.
I visited it one gloriously sunny day in July 2004.
You can walk through the horror.
The long table used for the meeting is frightening.
As if the objects had taken part in the crime.
The place with forever be charged with terror.
So this is what it means, when a chill runs down your spine.
I had never understood that expression before.
The physical manifestation of an invisible icy finger.
Tracing the vertebrae in your back. ~ David Foenkinos

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

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

Life hangs as nothing in the scale against dear Liberty! ~ Lucy Larcom

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

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

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

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

At the first Holocaust memorial commemoration in the Capitol Rotunda, both President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Mondale referred to the 'eleven million victims.' Carter also used Wiesenthal's figures of 'six million Jews and five million others' in his Executive Order establishing the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. I have attended Holocaust memorial commemorations in places as diverse as synagogues and army forts where eleven candles were lit. More significant is that strangers have repeatedly taken me and other colleagues to task for ignoring the five million non-Jews. When I explain that this is an invented concept, they become convinced of my ethnocentrism. ~ Deborah E. Lipstadt