Veteran Quotes

“Stomach full of jitters, little beasts that were second cousins to guacamolians—little green monsters that wreaked havoc in your stomach.”
― William Kely McClung, Super Ninja: The Sword of Heaven

“There was something that resonated on a deep… spiritual level… about cutting a man in half.”
― William Kely McClung, Super Ninja: The Sword of Heaven

“This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.”
― Thomas M Smith

“I found myself surrounded by really old veterans wearing hats that said, "Retired Marine - SEMPER FI." These hats didn't appear to fit on their heads, but instead seemed to hover over them.
At one point, I mistakenly tried to take the last box of crackers that a veteran also wanted. He started yelling, "I ran away from home at seventeen, lied about my age, and joined the Corps! I fought in World War II, Korea, and NAM! I have no cartilage in my right knee! It's bone-on-bone, but every morning I run six miles! I did not sacrifice my knee for this country to come here today and have you disrespect me at the commissary. Oooh-RAH!"
I dropped the crackers and walked away.”
― Mollie Gross, Confessions of a Military Wife

“I wasn't going to Shield my children from the violence of this world, because I don't want to shield them from an even bigger reality; light always breaks Darkness. Love defies hatred when we stand alongside our neighbors and say “No More”, to violence.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“It's our responsibility to sift the beliefs we've been given through the lens of self-sacrificing love- because it's not love if it only serves itself.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“Giving your life away is the only way to truly find it. Loving our enemies is what transforms fear into Freedom. Love has the power to change us.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“Showing up when violence wounds a community is what love looks like in public. Loving first, with our presence instead of only our prayers, wasn't safe but laying down my weapon in a war wasn't safe either. But it's what you do when you belong to each other.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“No one who goes to war ever really comes back. I had lost things, had parts of myself taken away from me, not all of me boarded the plane to come home. The war also liberated me to love those I've seen as an enemy. It gifted me with knowing what I would die for and what was worth living for; being the first to love every single time and waging peace as if my life depended on it.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“Violence isn't only bombs and bullets, it can be speaking words that dehumanize and looking away when someone needs you to lean in and stand up alongside them to confront the racism, the intimidation, or the belittling.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“Waging peace means we erase lines that tell us whose children are worthy to survive and whose children are disposable.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“If choosing to love first can change enemies into friends on the battlefield of Iraq, I know that it can right here, in our own neighborhoods, churches, and families, who are battling over politics, religion, migrants at the border, and who belongs in America. Love is the foundation I'm planting feet on.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“Love is what I'm arming my sons with to go out in an angry and hurting world.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“The amount of violence against another human being we are willing to accept is a litmus test for our own freedom.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“I'll never stop acknowledging the pain of others, because empathy is the flashlight leading us toward wholeness and healing. If we ignore those in our world and our neighborhoods who are in pain, we will ignore our own healing. We suffocate our own hope, because we are connected to each other. Waging peace is believing that the best for another person is the best for myself, my country, and my world.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“Showing up when violence wounds a community is what love looks like in public. Loving first, with our presence instead of only our prayers, wasn’t safe. Laying down my weapon in Iraq wasn’t safe either. But it’s what you do when you belong to each other.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“We were outsider, yes, but insiders to a hard-won truth: giving your life away is the only way to truly find it. Loving our enemies is what transforms fear into freedom. Love has the power to change us. As Dr. Sabah told me that first day over tea, “when one of us is cut, we all bleed. That is humanity.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“You can build something new, one person, one relationship, one meal at a time. You can build friendships instead of watering the flowers alongside our long-held fences. You can choose to believe in the unshakable goodness of those across the Pew or political divide. You can choose fierce kindness by speaking the truth to people about the impact their decisions make on the vulnerable. You can call Self Supremacy the liar it is. It's a bait and switch.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“I'm fighting for your freedom and my freedom. We must have Brave conversations. We must find out what we don't know. Waging peace requires that we have the courage to face what's broken first- in ourselves-and then in the system affecting those around us and uncover who has been harmed and how we are connected to them. Because we are intertwined together. Love speaks the truth of the harm done, while unshakable goodness holds space for the offender at the table. We all have a seat at the peacemaking table. Love is refusing to take away an oppressor’s chair at the family table while at the same time taking the stick of violence out of their hands. Because violence ricochets and is absorbed by the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. It's time to center their pain and to put ourselves between them and the violence.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“Love is what I'm arming my son's with to go out in an angry and hurting world. This is the truest gift I can give them-an arrow to load in their bow and a solid Bullseye to aim at. It's a posture to live from, to love from. The power to decide ahead of time how they will show up for the neighbor nobody likes and how they respond to the bully on the playground or to the violence and uncertainty this world is going to ambush them with.”
― Diana Oestreich, Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First

“But what I care most about is when the reader is finished with my work they can say, I don't know the particulars, but I know that emotion.”
― Michael Ramos

“Fight the fight you're in, not the one you want.”
― Steve Miska, Baghdad Underground Railroad: Saving American Allies in Iraq

“You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”
― Steve Miska, Baghdad Underground Railroad: Saving American Allies in Iraq

“Citizenship is not a spectator sport.”
― Steve Miska

“I like it. A Silicon Valley ghost story.”
― William Gibson, Agency

“Plenty of his classmates were drafted into the Fleet when the Forger War broke out, just like he was. But none of them became galaxy-famous war heroes when they were still teenagers. Dash hadn’t aspired to much before the war started, so he wasn’t sure how to aspire to anything at all once it ended.”
― Brian P. Rubin, Dim Stars

“Caudell hadn't touched a firearm since he left the army. His hands, he discovered, still knew what to do. The smell of oil and metal and powder that came from the rifle, the sensuously mechanical glide of the charging handle as he pushed it back to expose the open chamber, made him see the army's old Virginia campground almost as vividly as he did the courthouse where he stood. By the murmurs that rose from his comrades, they also had memories flooding back.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Building a life on solid accomplishment is more difficult than being an antiwar veteran and confessing one's guilt in public.”
― J. Glenn Gray

“Fellow veterans, you served; you deserve. You earned your VA disability benefits by serving our country.”
― Brian Reese

“Surround yourself with fellow veterans. The patriots and the heroes. Those who raised their right hand and took an oath to defend freedom. But most of all surround yourselves with brothers and sisters who feel your pain, who know your struggles, and who would do anything for you and you for them.”
― Brian Reese