Words To Live By.

“I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means...”

— John Adams

“[L]et us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us re-consecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.”

— Dwight Eisenhower

“No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.”

— Woodrow Wilson

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

— Sir Winston Churchill

“The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.”

— Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson

“No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”

— Calvin Coolidge

“In November 1776, after Washington had lost four battles and just before he crossed the Delaware to Trenton, British commanders offered a pardon to all who would swear allegiance to the crown. It was time to put up or shut up. I can hope I would have remained steadfast then, resolute in confidence that neither I nor my family would ever again sing ‘God Save the King.’ I didn’t have to make that choice. Thousands of men and women who went before us did, and thank God for every one of them.”

— Suzanne Fields

“Of our three national holidays, for me, Memorial Day is the most significant. The Fourth of July celebrates our independence. Harkening back to our beginnings, Thanksgiving recalls our religious roots. But it’s the blood and guts (the suffering and sacrifice) symbolized by Memorial Day that made America possible. To make ideals real—and to protect and preserve them—requires payment in the coin of strife and death.”

— Don Feder

“Once each May, amid the quiet hills and rolling lanes and breeze-brushed trees of Arlington National Cemetery, far above the majestic Potomac and the monuments and memorials of our Nation’s Capital just beyond, the graves of America’s military dead are decorated with the beautiful flag that in life these brave souls followed and loved. This scene is repeated across our land and around the world, wherever our defenders rest. Let us hold it our sacred duty and our inestimable privilege on this day to decorate these graves ourselves—with a fervent prayer and a pledge of true allegiance to the cause of liberty, peace, and country for which America’s own have ever served and sacrificed... Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation’s defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice and independence. Those true and only building blocks of peace were the lone and lasting cause and hope and prayer that lighted the way of those whom we honor and remember this Memorial Day. To keep faith with our hallowed dead, let us be sure, and very sure, today and every day of our lives, that we keep their cause, their hope, their prayer, forever our country’s own.”

— Ronald Reagan

“[L]et us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for... Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.”

— Ronald Reagan