89 Quotes About Veterans

Remembering the martyrs and honoring the armed forces on veterans day may make you feel proud, but sustaining a tradition that conditions you to celebrate the loss of life in the name of patriotism is not something to take pride in - if anything this celebration is a brutal reminder of tribalism - of our shortfalls - of our inability to assimilate - of our failure in becoming truly civilized. Therefore, the need of the hour is, we work so that we no longer need a veterans day.

In the treaty were provisions for the hundred thousand veterans left maimed and irrevocably mute throughout the city. As is the way of things, their sacred places and comforts have dwindled to a lonely strip of shoreline and a polite nod whenever they are passed in the street.

For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat. From the invasion of Afghanistan to the summer of 2009, the US military lost 761 soldiers in combat in that country. Compare that to the 817 who took their own lives over the same period, and this number does account for deaths related to violence, high-risk behaviors, and addiction.

My dad once told me that his biggest challenge after returning from Vietnam had been coming to terms with his own callousness. He’d made a deal with the war and traded his humanity for a ticket home.

The Marine Corps forced me to come home from Afghanistan. It's up to me to allow myself to come home.

When I crawled down the rabbit hole into the pivotal event of my life--indeed the pivotal event of my generation--to write "Escape from Saigon - a Novel" I never expected it to be such an emotional journey into a life I left four decades ago.

The desert is an unpredictable place. One day you're sweating, the next you're freezing. One moment the air is damp and cloudy like when the tide is coming in, the next the entire world is orange and dusty. The desert must be a woman.

May fireworks fill your heart and independence be your way of life.

The route had been renamed after the war, Sergeant Booth had told them in the taxi. Now it was known as the Road of Remembrance. To Billy, recalling Alf Dawkins with his crutches and his nervous tick, begging for half-crowns, it seemed more a case of how quickly people forgot.