D-Day Anniversary 2018: Quotes About Normandy Invasion At Omaha Beach

Wednesday marks 74 years since D-Day, the pivotal World War II operation in which Allied troops invaded Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. More than 160,000 soldiers stormed the French coast to take on the Nazi German fighters, making it the largest seaborne invasion in history.

"It is hard to conceive the epic scope of this decisive battle that foreshadowed the end of Hitler's dream of Nazi domination," the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia, writes on its website. "After years of meticulous planning and seemingly endless training, for the Allied forces, it all came down to this: The boat ramp goes down, then jump, swim, run and crawl to the cliffs."

The day is billed as “the beginning of the end of war in Europe.” Operation Overlord was supposed to start June 5, 1944, under United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower's orders, but bad weather delayed the attack.

Here are some quotes, from GoodReads, about the invasion:

1. "Sixty-five years ago in the thin light of gray dawn, more than 1,000 small craft took to a rough sea on a day that will be forever a day of bravery. On that June morning the young of our nations stepped out on those beaches below and into history. As long as freedom lives their deeds will never die." — Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

2. "This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred.'' — former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

3. "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." — former U.S. President Bill Clinton

4. "It is difficult to understand the courage it took to advance through minefields and barbed wire under fire from mortars and machine-guns in order to punch through Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, and yet that is exactly what many Canadians did." — former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

5. “Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.” — American historian Stephen E. Ambrose

6. "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 6 miles long and 2 miles wide." — former U.S. President Barack Obama

7. "The first night in France I spent in a ditch beside a hedgerow wrapped in a damp shelter-half and thoroughly exhausted. But I felt elated. It had been the greatest experience of my life. I was 10 feet tall. No matter what happened, I had made it off the beach and reached the high ground. I was king of the hill, at least in my own mind, for a moment." — Sgt. John Ellery

8. "The 6th June is not a day like others: it is not just the longest day or a day to remember the dead, but a day for the living to keep the promise written with the blood of the fighters, to be loyal to their sacrifice by building a world that is fairer and more human." — former French President François Hollande

9. “This operation is not being planned with any alternatives. This operation is planned as a victory, and that’s the way it’s going to be. We’re going down there, and we’re throwing everything we have into it, and we’re going to make it a success.” — former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower

10. "They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate." — former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt