Rita Rudner Quotes

If there was no war, the young men felt that they were denied manhood.

Blessed is that country whose soldiers fight for it and are willing to give the best they have, the best that any man has, their own lives, to preserve it, because they love it. Such an army the United States has always commanded in every crisis of its history.

For one thing, I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.

Dad entered the Second World War like any other man, trying to do the right thing.

Sacrifice is going to war for your country. Sacrifice is a brave young man being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan.

I am not ordering you to fight for your country. I am ordering you to die for your country!

We commit our lives to serving intangibles, swearing oaths to a piece of parchment or saluting an expanse of cloth decorated with stars and stripes. We understand symbolism because symbolism is what in large measure compiles us to do a job that might result in our demise.

I gave my life for freedom--This I know; For those who bade me fight had told me so.

I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart and not with his lips only, follow me.

Men go to war for fear, honor or interest.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

When you've married someone who's been at war, there is nothing you can do that compares to that level of selflessness and bravery.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

Like the American soldiers who went before them, they are putting their lives on the line to protect ours.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero. The minute anybody presumes that they are heroes, they get their boots taken away from them and buried in the sand.

If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.

Going to war was the only unselfish thing I have ever done for humanity.

Although the war in which you fought took place more than half-a-century ago, your courage, your sacrifice and your patriotism reaches through the decades and inspires us today.

With courage and character, American soldiers continue to put themselves on the line to defend our freedom, and so many have paid the ultimate sacrifice.

My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel.

As young West Point cadets, our motto was 'duty, honor, country.' But it was in the field, from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia to the sands of the Middle East, that I learned that motto's fullest meaning. There I saw gallant young Americans of every race, creed and background fight, and sometimes die, for 'duty, honor, and their country.'

Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage.

In my grandfather's day, there was a different perspective on war and men that went into war; it was such a patriotic act to fight for your country in the Forties.