Memorial Day 2011, quote 8

You can't use no eraser where you want to go. –Michael Herr, writer (1940-)

Memorial Day 2011, quote 7

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. –Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965)

Memorial Day 2011, quote 6

The real war will never get in the books. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

Memorial Day 2011, quote 5

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. -William Tecumseh Sherman, soldier (1820-1891)

Memorial Day 2011, quote 4

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. -Ernest Hemingway, writer (1899-1961)

Memorial Day 2011, quote 3

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. -Ernest Hemingway, writer (1899-1961)