Commemorations Quotes & Sayings

Only good poets cure us of an overindulgence in words. Only simple essential food cures us of gluttony. — Hector Abad Faciolince

I often imagine what it would be like if my father were still here to mark his 100th birthday, if Alzheimer's hadn't clawed away years, possibilities, hopes. What would he think of all the commemorations and celebrations? — Patti Davis

There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative. — Douglas MacArthur

Once aware of my isolation, I was afraid not of it but of its interruption. — Claire Messud

It is important not to become a prisoner of fate. — Steven Redhead

I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous. — Maya Angelou

The danger was within itself: it was the crisis of confidence it was going through, the fear of being itself. When you considered them individually, French boys were as active and intelligent as ever. But they lacked the sort of shared hope and dreams which are the sign of health in a people. The fact that the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Revolution were only funeral commemorations revealed that weakness, that lifelessness. It was so clear — Jean Guehenno

There are great lessons to be learn't in every trail. Look for the gold in every encounter. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Commemorations can stimulate debate, which will ultimately lead to a greater understanding of the events of our 'through-other' history and to shape a better future. — Martin McGuinness

At the first Holocaust memorial commemoration in the Capitol Rotunda, both President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Mondale referred to the 'eleven million victims.' Carter also used Wiesenthal's figures of 'six million Jews and five million others' in his Executive Order establishing the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. I have attended Holocaust memorial commemorations in places as diverse as synagogues and army forts where eleven candles were lit. More significant is that strangers have repeatedly taken me and other colleagues to task for ignoring the five million non-Jews. When I explain that this is an invented concept, they become convinced of my ethnocentrism. — Deborah E. Lipstadt

All in all, you're just another brick in the wall. — Pink Floyd

Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death. — Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey