The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.—Benjamin Disraeli

We who are left how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudginly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain? – Wilfred Wilson Gibson

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was. – Maya Lin