Quotes & Sayings About Flag Day

was like being told you can run free one day - in June several years from now - but during every second of the intervening time, you'll be getting run over by the world's slowest steamroller, and every day it cracks a bone, and recracks it, and recracks it, and when you're eighteen all you're going to have is a body full of dust, lifted and carried into the future like a flag loose from its mast. — J. Ryan Stradal

Meditation is one of the most serious things; you do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody "I love you", when you are considering your children, when you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, worshipping the flag, educating them to enter into this trap of the modern world; watching all that, realizing your part in it, all that is part of meditation. And when you so meditate you will find in it an extraordinary beauty; you will act rightly at every moment; and if you do not act rightly at a given moment it does not matter, you will pick it up again - you will not waste time in regret. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Only one thing to it: a strong stomach. The guts to gladhand a man you're going to stab in the back; pledge allegiance to principles you stomp on every day; righteously denounce some despot in the press and sell him arms under the table. The talent to whip up the voters' worst passions while you seem to call on their highest instincts, and the sense to stay wrapped in the flag. That's politics: I'll take the simple life. — Pierre-Augustin Caron De Beaumarchais

There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.
We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition So clear of victory, As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear. — Emily Dickinson

When you fight, you don't fight for abstract values like the flag, or the nation, or democracy. You fight for your buddy. You fight to keep him alive, and he fights to keep you alive, and you go on that way, day after day, battle after battle. And when one of your buddies dies, something inside you dies as well. But you go on. You fight, so that his death isn't meaningless, his sacrifice isn't for nothing. — Richard Marcinko

I may believe in God, but I'm at war with Him. I'm a scientist, I try to answer questions, one at a time, so there's a little less room for Him as the answer. I plant my flag, and inch by inch, I take away His kingdom. It's odd, but none of this has ever occurred to me before. I never even saw a real contradiction between science and religion. I see it now, I see it clear as day. — Sylvain Neuvel

They were submerged in wild strawberry hunts, swimming and water skiing, horse rides, sing alongs, and nature walks on miles of trails disappearing into the saintly aspens. Awards hung from cabins' flag poles, and each day ended with camp fire vespers at sunset with Logan's Bible stories and more singing. The exhausted, happy youngsters were packed, day after day, and long into the night, with sugar-coated cereals, candy, soft drinks, and God. — Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell

I can't claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don't know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as ours does: Does that flag still wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? That is what we must all ask. — Ronald Reagan

The dedication had been anticipated nationwide. Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth's Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands ... — Erik Larson

The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat! But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red, The starry lives that keep its field alight. — Rupert Hughes

They've taken their own precautions against Al Qaeda. To prepare for an attack, each Frenchman is urged to keep duct tape, a white flag, and a three-day supply of mistresses in the house. — Argus Hamilton

Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast. — Henry Miller

I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day. I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did. — Benjamin Harrison

As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

[...] I'd wake up in the middle of the night to the Star-Spangled Banner and some old film of a flag blowing in the wind, telling you the day was over and it was long past time to go to bed. That was back when days used to end, before CNN and infomercials, before all our days bled right into each other. — Michael Montoure

The Fourth of July-memorable in the history of our nation as the great day of independence to its countrymen-had no claim upon our sympathies. They made a flag and threw it to the heavens and bid it float forever; but every star in it was against us. — Henry McNeal Turner

Hen a war ends, what does that look like exactly?
do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves?
does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?
when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass
and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at
does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold?
yesterday i was told a story
about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old,
who cannot fall asleep
because when she does
she dreams of nothing
but the day she watched her dog
eat her neighbor's corpse.
if you told her war is over
do you think she can sleep? — Andrea Gibson

Today at school I wrote an essay about Flag Day which was so beautiful, but ever so beautiful - for I even used words without really knowing what they meant. — Clarice Lispector

But Annabeth just smiled and put us in jail. As she was heading back to the front line, she turned and winked.
"See you at the fireworks?"
She didn't even wait for my answer before darting off into the woods.
I looked at Beckendorf. "Did she just ... ask me out?"
He shrugged, completely disgusted. "Who knows with girls? Give me a haywire dragon, any day."
So we sat together and waited while the girls won the game. — Rick Riordan

It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Seriously, did I miss something? Did John F. Kennedy walk into the Oval Office one day, only to find Fidel Castro lighting his Cohiba with the American flag while teabagging Jackie? — Sterling Archer

The day Flag went on tour forever we set the loading dock on fire. It was a special kind of concrete that burned.

Rollins was too pissed for a tour kickoff set. We just stood on the roof til it started falling in, watching their backs get small in the heatshimmer. After a while there's just four black bars against the road. You can't ever tell what comes true. — Noah Wareness

Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge. — Albert Camus

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It's all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you. — Colum McCann

All flesh is one: what matter scores; Or color of the suit Or if the helmet glints with blue or gold? All is one bold achievement, All is fine spring-found-again-in-autumn day When juices run in antelopes along our blood, And green our flag, forever green ... — Ray Bradbury

My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, itwill turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedomthat America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity. — Woodrow Wilson

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong. — James Bryce

We are particularly frustrated that so much of our politics today consists of lines first written during the clashes, domestic and foreign, of the 1960s. This "Groundhog Day" approach to replaying the culture war's tropes is perhaps nowhere in greater evidence than in how Americans talk about patriotism. Patriotism, as an idea, has been co-opted over the course of a generation by right-wingers who use the flag not as a symbol of transcendent national unity, but as a sectarian cudgel against the hippies, Francophiles, free-lovers and tree-huggers who constitute their caricature of the American left. The American left, for its part, has been so beaten down by this star-spangled caricature that it has largely ceded the very notion of patriotism to the right. As a result, the first reaction of far too many progressives to any talk of patriotism is automatic, allergic recoil. Needless to say, this reaction simply tightens the screws of the right's imprisoning caricature. — Eric Liu

Sean may have had his problems, but he was a smart kid - the day's lesson was not lost on him, I'm certain. It wasn't lost on me: It doesn't matter how good you are at flag signals if no one is watching - the distress call is only as good as the person looking out for it."

~"Turning Stones: My Days and Nights With Children at Risk — Marc Parent

On what rests the hope of the republic? One country, one language, one flag! — Alexander Henry

Special Agent Brad Wolgast hated Texas. He hated everything about it.
[ ... ] He hated the billboards and the freeways and the faceless subdivisions and the Texas flag, which flew over everything, always as big as a circus tent; he hated the giant pickup trucks everybody drove, no matter that gas was thirteen bucks a gallon and the world was slowly seaming itself to death like a package of peas in a microwave. He hated the boots and the belts and the way people talked, ya'll this and ya'll that, as if they spent the day ropin' and ridin', not cleaning teeth and selling insurance and doing the books, like people did everywhere. — Justin Cronin

That's what made the panics about huge zero-day security ruptures such a fright: the sudden knowledge that everything might have been auto-pwned by a random crim or asshole who used a skin-detection algorithm to catch you masturbating, keywords to flag your embarrassing conversations, harvesting your biometrics for playback attacks on your finances and social nets. — Cory Doctorow

My daddy served in the army where he lost his right eye, but he flew a flag out in our yard until the day that he died. He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me, to grow up and live happy in the land of the free. — Toby Keith

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fourth of July
By the River, By the River
came the White Horse Rider
On "Freedom" call
and eagles' wings he soared ...
Still Believe and Reach out Strong
Don't give up when things go wrong!
Always have hope ...
Remember the day
When the flag stood high
and the future
seemed to go on endless
across the sky — Phil Mitchell

of those New York construction workers were honored at the White House a few weeks later by President Nixon. He thanked them for showing their patriotism the day they beat students. He gave them flag lapel pins, and they gave him a yellow hard hat like the ones they wore the day they assaulted students, seventy of whom were seriously injured. — Betty Medsger

When the day comes in which the Kingdom of God will bear rule, the flag of the United States will proudly flutter unsullied on the flag staff of liberty and equal rights, without a spot to sully its fair surface; the glorious flag our fathers have bequeathed to us will then be unfurled to the breeze by those who have power to hoist it aloft and defend its sanctity. — Brigham Young

I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival. — Milos Forman

On February 8, 1928, known as Lindbergh day since it was the day he crossed the Atlantic Ocean the year before, Charles A. Lindbergh landed at the Campo Columbia airfield near Havana. Lindbergh had visited many countries in his plane, and he had the national flags of each country painted in the fuselage. Having flown from Haiti, on a Goodwill Tour of the Caribbean in his "Spirit of St. Louis," he had the Cuban flag painted on his a single-engine Ryan monoplane. It was the last country he visited before he donated the "Spirit of St. Louis" to the Smithsonian Institution, where it is still exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — Hank Bracker

O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take:
From something of material sublime,
Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle, - but my flag is not unfurl'd ... — John Keats

The next thing I knew, the season of politics was over. Like a drooping flag on a windless day, the gigantic shock waves that had convulsed society for a time were swallowed up by a colorless, mundane workaday world. — Haruki Murakami

Pledge Allegiance was a pretty generic name back in the day. In the 80's I was the promoter for all the punk rock shows and I'd book Black Flag, Dead Kennedy's, Minor Threat etc and I'd hook them up with places to stay if needed so it's hard to keep track of it all. — Reed Mullin

In the event of the death of a current or former President, like the recent death of President Ronald Reagan, the flag should be flown at half-staff for thirty days from the day of the death. — Michael K. Simpson

Essentially, the Tea Party are the Hell's Angels, but with sun visors instead of switch blades. They push macaroni instead of meth. Mess with the Tea Party and they'll put your dog in an American flag sweater on a hot day. — Greg Gutfeld

It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays. — Shane Claiborne

Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend's girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do. — Haruki Murakami

The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. — Charles Dickens

You've probably heard the term, 'red flag warning.' That means there are extreme conditions. Low humidity, high temperatures. The fuels are extremely dry and volatile. We classify those in East Tennessee as 'fire days' so if your fire class day is a 1, it's relatively low. A class 5 day would be an extremely high danger day. A day like Sunday would be a 4 or a 5. — Bruce Miller

In Korea I'd been so afraid that Sami would lose her dad. She did, but she didn't get a flag. He went to Doha, then to Baghdad, then to Kabul, then to someplace else, and then to a different someplace else, on and on. He'd come home, leave again, come home, leave again, until one day he came home a different person altogether. Sami lost Angel, lost her family, and then she lost herself. — Tucker Elliot

I miss both of my parents terribly every day, but especially as we approach Thanksgiving. We always came together as a family for that holiday, playing capture the flag and touch football and laughing a lot. — Mark Shriver

She wanted to tell him so mach, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. — Colum McCann

Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave. That is why I believe that this frightfulness we see everywhere today is only temporary. Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. All men will want to be free and share our way of life. There must be so much that I should have said, but haven't. What I will say now is just what most of us are probably thinking every day. I thank God and America for the right to live and raise my family under the flag of tolerance, democracy and freedom. — Walt Disney Company

The Wisconsin senator gets up and says out loud what half of the country is thinking and talks about every day. This President broke the law and lied about it; he trashed the Constitution and hides himself in the flag. — Russ Feingold

Milo carefully said nothing when Major de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. — Joseph Heller

The word impossible does not exist for me. I've got a lot of signal flags in my flag bag, but there is not a white one in there. I am going to keep fighting until the day I die - and might keep on fighting afterward ... depends on where I am. — Ted Turner

It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag , a few speeches, and a national anthem; to this day I avoid the label "Lebanese," preferring the less restrictive "Levantine" designation. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I anticipate the day when to command respect in the remotest regions it will be sufficient to say I am an American. Our flag shall then wave in glory over the ocean and our commerce feel no restraint but what our own government may impose. Happy thrice happy day. Thank God, to reach this envied state we need only to will. Yes my countrymen. Our destiny depends on our will. But if we would stand high on the record of time that will must be inflexible. — Gouverneur Morris

Champs-de-Mars, the day of celebration: a crowd of people in Sunday clothes. Women with parasols, pet dogs on leads. Stickyfingered children pawing at their mothers; people who have bought coconuts and don't know what to make of them. Then the glint of light on bayonets, people clutching hands, whirling children off their feet, pushing and calling out in alarm as they are separated from their families. Some mistake, there must be some mistake. The red flag of martial law is unfurled. What's a flag, on a day of celebration? Then the horrors of the first volley. And back, losing footing, blood blossoming horribly on the grass, fingers under stampeding feet, the splinter of hoof on bone. It is over within minutes. An example has been made. A soldier slides from his saddle and vomits. — Hilary Mantel

If anyone, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him - it means just what Concord and Lexington meant; what Bunker Hill meant; which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties. — Henry Ward Beecher

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears. — Charles Dickens