“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
— Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Brian Jay Jones 
“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.
“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.
“What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
“And all music is.”
–Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions
1973
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I was in Belgium last week, an overwhelming experience. Lincoln’s words came to me then, and I was grateful to the teachers who (wisely) forced us to memorise them.
God bless all the ones we’ve lost, and all the ones who will who spend today in their country’s uniform.
Beautiful post.
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Lincoln was certainly our most eloquent president. Almost everything he ever wrote or said gives me chills.
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Didn’t you love when Obama was asked by the media what he had been reading lately, and he replied, “Some of Lincoln’s writings.” Booya!
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