A Quote by Michael E. Thornton

This Medal of Honor does not belong to me. This medal belongs to every man and woman who has ever served their country. We were doing what we were trained to do. We were doing our job.
Medal of Honor belongs to every man and woman who gives us the freedom today to be able to hold our flag and hold our heads up high and say we have the greatest country in the world. And that goes with the men and women in the past, and the men and women of today, and the men and women of the future. As long as Mike Thornton lives, that medal will always stand for all them. Not for me. Not for what I've done, but for what I was trained to do and what they have been trained to do to give us our freedom today.
They said we were soft, that we would not fight, that we could not win. We are not a warlike nation. We do not go to war for gain or for territory; we go to war for principles, and we produce young men like these. I think I told every one of them that I would rather have that medal, the Congressional Medal of Honor, than to be President of the United States.
I showed everyone the medal and they said, 'Ooh, I can't believe how heavy it is,' Sometimes they were more interested in the medal than in me. I was like, 'Hey, what about me?'
Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day always says we were influences on him, because he does melodic but distorted, like what we were doing. The Ramones were doing it. We were doing it. The Buzzcocks, all those bands.
When I was growing up, officers in uniform were very impressive to me. They were doing a job. They were protecting our country; they were heroes. When you wear an old military jacket, there's some sort of connection to those qualities - to being strong, to being tough, to being a warrior.
You can't start out at 20 in whatever your profession is and say, "I want to win an Olympic medal," or "I want to become president," or "I want to win the Pulitzer Prize." If you love what you're doing, it's sort of a nice thing that happens toward the end of your career, or in the middle of your career. It is not the reason you were doing it. The reason you were doing it is because every day you wake up in the morning and you can't wait to learn something new.
"For 46 years, we were engaged in a worldwide battle against communism". "During that time, there were countless heroes, who served in our nation's Armed Forces and played a critical role in America's triumph. These men and women, who sacrificed so much for so many, deserve to be awarded the Cold War Service Medal in recognized of their faithful service to their country and tireless defense of freedom around the world."
I was a woman and younger. I started spending a lot of time in the mall doing a lot of qualitative research and really watching what consumers were doing. Were they gravitating towards the sales racks, or were they looking at the new fashions? Were they there to shop, or were they there to socialize?
I feel like every catastrophe in our lives, you remember exactly where you were, what you were doing, who you were with, almost down to what you were wearing.
There's such a void in the medical system. When my husband was sick, it became very apparent to me that the nurses were doing the doctor's job, and the doctors were doing the disease job, so no one was caring for the patient and the loved one.
My parents had no interest in spending a lot of time with me. They were busy doing what they were doing, but they were not obnoxious. They were fabulous.
Someone asked me the other day, 'What is your most memorable moment in your career?' and by far, China was. Being so close - the medal race was one part of the story, and there were a few incidents through the event that amounted to that massive drama at the end that cost us the medal.
There is so much good music from our scene in the U.K., and I'm happy I'm part of that movement. For a long time, we were trying to do what the Americans were doing, we were trying to do what the pop stars from England were doing, and we just didn't understand.
It actually took me a year to learn how to play running back - to understand what they were doing defensively and then what our guys were doing every single play.
I wasn't expecting two seconds of me on the medal stand to go viral after the Olympics. I came back to my room after the medal ceremony, and my dad said this picture of me doing a face I don't even remember making is blowing up.
The medal just was an object, just a medal, and that's it. What really meant something was the blood, the sweat, the tears that went into getting that medal. I'll always have the memories of that with me.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!