Poll: Top 25 Memorial Day Quotes by Famous Personalities

Results of 164 votes:

1. 1.
   

   Ronald Reagan

    

   "I don't have to tell you how fragile this precious gift of freedom is. Every time we hear, watch, or read the news, we are reminded that liberty is a rare commodity in this world."
2. 2.
   

   Albert Einstein

    

   "We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart."
3. 3.
   

   Barack Obama

    

   "Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay, but we can honor their sacrifice."
4. 4.
   

   Mark Twain

    

   "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
5. 5.
   

   Plato

    

   "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
6. 6.
   

   Nelson Mandela

    

   "There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires."
7. 7.
   

   Helen Keller

    

   "What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."
8. 8.
   

   Bob Marley

    

   "Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life."
9. 9.
   

   Dwight D. Eisenhower

    

   "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
10. 10.
    

    George Washington

     

    "Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
11. 11.
    

    John F. Kennedy

     

    "Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country."
12. 12.
    

    George S. Patton

     

    "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."
13. 13.
    

    Jim Morrison

     

    "Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."
14. 14.
    

    John Twelve Hawks

     

    "True freedom is tolerant. It gives people the right to live and think in new ways."
15. 15.
    

    Maya Angelou

     

    "How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!"
16. 16.
    

    Bergen Evans

     

    "Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt."
17. 17.
    

    Bill Clinton

     

    "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
18. 18.
    

    Joseph Campbell

     

    "A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."
19. 19.
    

    Michel de Montaigne

     

    "Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul."
20. 20.
    

    Norman Schwarzkopf

     

    "It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle."
21. 21.
    

    Franklin D. Roosevelt

     

    "In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved."
22. 22.
    

    Calvin Coolidge

     

    "Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion."
23. 23.
    

    Benjamin Disraeli

     

    "The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example."
24. 24.
    

    James A. Garfield

     

    "For love of country they accepted death."
25. 25.
    

    Thomas Bailey Aldrich

     

    "Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays ... The grim cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach blossoms."