Memorial Day Motivation

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Yesterday was Memorial Day in America.

It’s an important day for everyone. We remember all the men and women who gave their lives to make this country what it is. But it is very important to me. You all know I say I’m not self-made. I was born in Austria, made in America.

I am filled with gratitude for the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to make this country the beacon it was to me and so many others. You cannot write my life story without them.

They made a decision that their country — and all of us — came before themselves. I can’t thank them enough.

There truly are not words to describe my gratitude. But if anyone came the closest, it was one of my heroes, Abraham Lincoln, at Gettysburg. So today, I leave you with his words because, like he said, very few people will ever remember what we say, but everyone should always remember what these true heroes did.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

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.