Normandy Quotes

The height of human desire is what wins, whether it’s on Normandy Beach or in Ohio Stadium.

there on the beaches of Normandy I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives were laced with the markings of greatness.

During a period of time when Italy is talking about splitting northern and southern Italy, France is talking about splitting with Corsica and Normandy, England is talking about splitting with Wales and Scotland and England. And it goes on and on and on.

I was in the invasion of Normandy in southern France.

President Bush paid homage Wednesday to World War II veterans of Normandy at the D-Day Memorial. Later that night, his twin daughters paid a special tribute to World War II veterans of the Pacific. They each downed two kamikazes.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely

We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

WWII is something contemporary readers already know a lot about. If our schools are doing their jobs, they know about the invasion of Normandy, the Hitler Youth, the Holocaust, and at least a few of the horrors of the Eastern Front.

They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or the next. It was the deep knowledge - and pray God we have not lost it - that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.

It was very strange, because my father [ Erwin Rommel] received the first call at seven o'clock in the morning. And [Hans] Speidel told my father, "I will call you up in one hour when I see more clearly what's going on." After an hour, Speidel said, "Yes, the landing took place in Normandy." And the German Navy had told my father that it was too stormy. And that the British and the Americans and the French can't come. And my father believed him.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

I can't count how many of my friends are in the cemetery at Normandy, the heroes are still there, the real heroes.

I had a go at changing history - maybe not all by myself - I fought at the battle of Normandy, I slogged through the Ardennes, and I celebrated the liberation of Paris on the streets with beautiful French girls throwing flowers at me. I said good-bye to my first true love and discovered what I really wanted to do with my life.

My outlook on warfare is best illustrated by a cartoon I did some thirty-odd years ago of a soldier in an Italian foxhole reading about the Normandy invasion and observing to his buddy that: "The hell this ain't the most important hole in the world . I'm in it.

I tell people my breasts were made in Normandy from butter and creme fraiche.

If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.

All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?

I believe, if done correctly, eliminating Saddam and liberating Iraq could be the ‘Normandy Invasion’ or ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’ of our generation...the Iraqi people are eager to be rid of Saddam, and there is equally encouraging evidence that republican principles could thrive there.

May we all, as a nation of believers, fight for the achievement of America, may we make sacrifices worthy of those proud men and women who fought for us, labored for us, bled soil from the beaches of Normandy to the fields of Gettysburg for us.

That road to V-E Day was hard and long, and traveled by weary and valiant men. And history will always record where that road began. It began here, with the first footprints on the beaches of Normandy.

We know that progress is not inevitable. But neither was victory upon these beaches. Now, as then, the inner voice tells us to stand up and move forward. Now, as then, free people must choose.

A little while ago I visited Omaha Beach for the second time in my life. In the intervening 26 years, nearly 20,000 tides had come and gone and little remains visible of the greatest military landing in man's history of endless warring. What's to be seen is mostly in a superb museum and a panoramic cemetery. The cemetery memorializes with dignity and grandeur the event and the dead, and moves one deeply. Before they die less precipitously and/or in lesser purpose, Americans who can should visit World War II's Normandy Beach. Such seeing and remembering helps a man's perspective.

I've read all the books, I've watched all the films and now, thanks to the glory of home gaming, I've even kind of experienced it: I've landed on the beaches of Normandy, I have successfully held Pegasus Bridge and I've disabled German tanks with stolen Panzerfausts. I have fought in Italy, France and North Africa and if I had a Euro for every virtual life I've lost I'd be able to build a replica of Hitler's bunker in my back garden.

To see for themselves what the United States has been willing to undertake in the name of freedom. We should all visit Normandy. We should pay homage to those brave Americans who stormed ashore at Omaha Beach and gave their lives for the freedom of others.

Mom's dad was in the army, stormed the beach at Normandy, fought through the French hedgerows, the Battle of the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, and liberated concentration camps at the end of the war.

This is our problem, our dilemma, yes? We cannot celebrate and declare ourselves to belong to the victorious nations because our brothers and our fathers and grandfathers died in this battle [in Normandy], yes. I understand that the Americans and the British and French celebrate one of the greatest and most important military victories in history. And I understand this. I don't see a reasonable place for the Germans. We watch everything on the television with compassion and sympathy.

So my father [Erwin Rommel] decided during the battle in Normandy, he knew really soon that it wasn't possible to win this battle. But my father decided pretty soon to, if necessary, to surrender on his own responsibility when the British or Americans penetrate the German positions.

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

Almost 60,000 average Americans had the courage to go out and charge those beaches on Normandy, to drop out of airplanes who knows where, and take on the battle for freedom. Average Americans, the very Americans that our government now and this president does not trust to make a decision on your health care plan. Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan.

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.

The eyes of the world are upon you.

I think that both Russia and other international actors, including those who are more actively engaged in the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis (that is the Federal Republic of Germany and France, the so-called Normandy Quartet, certainly, with close involvement of the United States, and we have intensified our dialogue on this issue), we should all be committed to the full and unconditional implementation of the agreements that were achieved in Minsk. The Minsk Agreements have to be implemented.

It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide.