Gettysburg War Quotes & Sayings

I watched Ken Burns' Civil War series on PBS. My favorite segment is when Bob Hope entertains the troops at Gettysburg. — Mort Sahl

By what criterion ... can we distinguish among the numberless effects, that are also causes, and among the causes that may, for aught we can know, be also effects, - how can we distinguish which are the means and which are the ends? — Chauncey Wright

The firsthand and the inter-generational experience, is the key, without it there is no memory once that first generation is gone. — Suzanna Eibuszyc

Scott Walker's campaign slogan is 'Reform. Growth. Safety.' Which is actually similar to Donald Trump's new slogan: 'Mexico. Money. Crazy.' — Jimmy Fallon

Can you be happy here, lass?" She smiled and turned her gaze to the beautiful land covered in green and budding flowers. "I am happy wherever you are, husband. — Maya Banks

I don't care what your daddy told you. I don't care what your grandaddy told you. The South lost. Get over it man! -January, 2003; Opening lecture to Intro to Civil War Era Studies, Gettysburg College — Mark A. Weitz

The war had been a daily thought, a continual consciousness in her life for two years, but never a real presence. Battles were things that were fought somewhere else, won somehow, by someone, and lost by someone else. Now as she stood by her own door and listened to the cannons, it was with a chilling, dreadfully full and clear realization that men were out on the field beneath that gray cloud taking each other's lives. — Elisabeth Grace Foley

That old man ... had my division massacred at Gettysburg! — George Pickett

THE FIGHTING IN THE PEACH ORCHARD AT GETTYSBURG
PROLOGUE
The same young men who crowded each other as they faced the recruiters' tables now crowded each other as they died. — Charles Phillips

Under standing orders from General Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia enslaved any and all black persons it could seize - in Virginia, Maryland, even Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign. It made no distinctions between those who had escaped during the war, those born free, or those freed before the war under the laws of Southern states. If they were black, the men in gray took them as property. — T. J. Stiles

Being fit will keep you mentally sharp and people forget that. — Peter Shilton

I'm enjoying the opportunity that 'Parks And Recreation' affords me to exploit my own soapbox agenda, which is to try to encourage people to make things with their hands. — Nick Offerman

What began as a bitter dispute over Union and States' Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said perhaps more than he knew. The war was about a new birth of freedom. — Bruce Catton

I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that. — Jerry Spinelli

Gettysburg is still considered the most famous battle of the war. Why? At Gettysburg, the tide turned. Up until then, the South had been winning. After Gettysburg, the Confederates were no longer sure their army was unbeatable. And after two years of losing battles, the Northern forces gained pride and confidence. They believed the war was theirs to win. And they were right. Gettysburg was a prosperous market town of 2,400 people. A network of ten roads extended out from town like the spokes of a wheel. Until July 1863, Gettysburg was not well known like other cities in Pennsylvania such as Philadelphia or Harrisburg. — Jim O'Connor

The crux of the worldview conflict ... is the denial of God's right to be God, and the usurpation of that right by man. In a word, it is a life or death struggle over _sovereignty_. Who will be sovereign- man or God?
If God has lost the authority to be sovereign over reality, if He has lost the authority to provide objective law, and if He has lost the authority to reveal absolute truth, then in the eyes of men, He has lost the right to be God. He has been stripped of His "God-ness," or the very attributes which make Him God.
At the same time, man is never content to be godless. He must have a god. Somebody or something must provide that authority. Thus, modern man gladly assumes that position, and humanist man becomes his own ultimate authority ... This is the Gettysburg of the worldview war of the 21st century. — Kevin Swanson

Decide that life is good and you are special. Decide to enjoy today. Decide that you will live life to the fullest now, no matter what. Trust that you will change what needs changing, but also decide that you're not going to put off enjoying life just because you don't have everything you want now. Steadfastly refuse to let anything steal your joy. Choose to be happy ... and you will be. — Donna Fargo

Near his foot was a map of Gettysburg, and he looked down at the ridges and grooves running across the land. It wasn't just the nation that the war had divided; it was families as well. Everyone had been fighting for what they thought was right, no matter who was on the opposite side of the line, whether it was your father or your brother or your son. It was about issues and causes and ideas, and what more could you ask of a person, Peter thought, than to risk all that they were for all they believed they could be? — Jennifer E. Smith

I had a head for religious ideas. They were the first ideas I ever encountered. They made other ideas seem mean ... I had miles of Bible in memory: some perforce, but most by hap, like the words to songs. There was no corner of my brain where you couldn't find, among the files of clothing labels and heaps of rocks, among the swarms of protozoans and shelves of novels, whole tapes and snarls and reels of Bible. — Annie Dillard

I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down upon my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His, and our cause His cause, that we could not stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. Then and there I made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him, and He did stand by you boys, and I will stand by him. And after that, I don't know how it was, and I cannot explain it, soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands, and things would go right at Gettysburg, and that was why I had no fears about you. — Abraham Lincoln

The sinister nature of the American soil is apparent in places like Gettysburg. Fertilize it with the blood of heros, and it brings forth a frozen-custard stand. — Russell Baker

Locale and point of focus and heroine. She leaves the great battlefields of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Bull Run and Antietam to the others and places the Civil War in the middle of Scarlett O'Hara's living room. She has the Northern cannons sounding beyond Peachtree Creek as Melanie Wilkes goes into labor, and has the city of Atlanta in flames as Scarlett is seized with an — Margaret Mitchell

The greatest enthusiasts for Civil War history and memory often displace complicated consequences by endlessly focusing on the contest itself. We sometimes lift ourselves out of historical time, above the details, and render the war safe in a kind of national Passover offering as we view a photograph of the Blue and Gray veterans shaking hands across the stone walls at Gettysburg. Deeply embedded in an American mythology of mission, and serving as a mother lode of nostalgia for antimodernists and military history buffs, the Civil War remains very difficult to shuck from its shell of sentimentalism. — David W. Blight

The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates. — H.L. Mencken

So, ah, who's the lucky girl?" Sam asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. When Jericho ignored him, Sam grabbed one of Jericho's Civil War soldier figurines and held it up to his mouth. "Oh, Jericho," he said in a high-pitched voice. "Take me in your arms, you big he-man, you!"
"Please put General Meade back in Gettysburg. You're changing the course of the war. And it's just a date. — Libba Bray

I remember a story I read once, a soldier, was it at Shiloh? He was talking to me but not with his whole attention. Gettysburg? a soldier so mad with shock that he started burying birds and squirrels on the battlefield. You had lot of little things killed too, in the crossfire, little animals. Many tiny graves. p128 — Donna Tartt

The rain still drummed on the roof, like fine needles striking the shingles. The family sat silently around the table, each one wrapped in their own thoughts.
It was Matthew's voice that broke the silence, asking, "And what happened after that?"
"After that," said Paul, "came Gettysburg. — Elisabeth Grace Foley

Because all men are but reflections of their upbringing, education, and experiences, we also expend considerable effort scrutinizing both the man and the general who led the Army of Northern Virginia north that summer. Robert E. Lee was trained as an engineer at West Point, studied extensively the campaigns of the Great Captains of military history, and learned the art of command and maneuver at the elbow of General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War. The aggregate of these experiences had a profound and demonstrable influence on his generalship. It is against this backdrop of education and experience that Lee's decisions during the Gettysburg Campaign must be examined, understood, and judged. — Scott Bowden

Few generals were as brilliant as Robert E. Lee and few battles as titanic
and puzzling
as Gettysburg. Why did Lee fail? In Lost Triumph, Tom Carhart offers a bold and provocative new assessment. Agree or disagree, it is sure to stimulate debate among even the most seasoned Civil War buffs. — Jay Winik

Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap. — Ezra Pound

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. — Abraham Lincoln

My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners. — Jimmy Carter

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This — Ta-Nehisi Coates