Politics & Power Quote by Calvin Coolidge

Memory is power in Coolidge's line, and he wields it like a warning label: gratitude isn’t just virtuous, it’s survival. Coming from a president not known for rhetorical fireworks, the sentence lands with a clipped, almost legal certainty. “Defenders” is doing heavy work here. It’s not merely soldiers in a narrow sense; it’s a category of people whose sacrifice becomes a moral credit the state must honor. To “forget” them isn’t just impolite - it’s a kind of civic breach of contract.

The subtext is transactional and nationalistic in the early-20th-century way: a country earns legitimacy by tending the story of those who fought for it. If you let that story rot, the nation itself loses its claim to continuity. Coolidge ties identity to remembrance, suggesting that nations are less built from territory than from rituals of recognition - parades, monuments, benefits, the public language of honor. It’s a soft demand with hard implications: fund the institutions that care for veterans; keep the mythology intact; make sacrifice legible to the next generation.

Context matters. Coolidge governed in the long shadow of World War I, amid debates over isolationism, military readiness, and how much the government owed those who served. The quote anticipates later flashpoints like the Bonus Army, when veterans’ demands collided with a state eager to move on. Coolidge’s sentence insists you can’t skip the bill. Neglect isn’t neutral; it’s self-erasure.