Vietnam Quotations

I have experienced bad dating and ineptitude with women all across the globe, from Vietnam to Paris. When I was 21, women were an enigma; they were this code that had to be cracked. They were 'The Other.' I have often thought writing this stuff into stand-up and shows would be an exorcism, but it hasn't been; it makes no difference.

In 1968, America was a wounded nation. The wounds were moral ones; the Vietnam War and three summers of inner-city riots had inflicted them on the national soul, challenging Americans' belief that they were a uniquely noble and honorable people.

Korea taught me nothing, for no one spoke of it when I was growing up, except as something about how wonderful the girls in Japan were. Vietnam taught some of us more than we perhaps ever wished to know.

If the Mets can win the World Series, the United States can get out of Vietnam.

I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war.

Individual rights always go along with the interests of the society. I want to add that in Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.

I had the good fortune to be able to right an injustice that I thought was being heaped on young people by lowering the voting age, where you had young people that were old enough to die in Vietnam but not old enough to vote for their members of Congress that sent them there.

The consequences of President Johnson's campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could hardly have been more catastrophic for the nation, the military, the president, his party, and the presidency itself.

People take sides on political things, such as the Vietnam War. War is immoral and war is wrong, but I don't think the clergy ought to bring it before the Church.

Well, I think everybody's a little jealous of the Vietnam Wall, even people from wars that already have good monuments. You have a monument like the Wall and nobody ever forgets your war, you can bet on that.

I was terrified of the Vietnam War when I was 13. I thought I was going. The draft was such an ominous thing, I felt as if it was going to trickle down to me.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

Lyndon Johnson may have escalated the war, but when I was drafted and shipped off to Vietnam, the signature on my orders was Nixon's.

It is a fact that the Left routinely resists, then as now: Americans fought and died in Vietnam for freedom, just as they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Whatever mistakes generals and policymakers have made along the way cannot detract from that essential truth - which should be a part of any reliable history.

A quarter-century after the end of the Vietnam War, and eleven years after the collapse of the Berlin wall, it has become commonplace to say that we Americans have no consensus on foreign policy. Across the political spectrum, left or right, most Americans still cling to whatever assumptions they held during our long journey through the Cold War.

What has been adjudicated and established in the wake of Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement is the ability of the press to basically write or broadcast almost anything about the government. There's very few restrictions in that way.

I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it.

Today, war of necessity is used by critics of military action to describe unavoidable response to an attack like that on Pearl Harbor that led to our prompt, official declaration of war, while they characterize as unwise wars of choice the wars in Korea, Vietnam and the current war in Iraq.

Richard Nixon as a 12-year-old was given a portrait of Lincoln that he hung over his bed. Nixon also justified what would later be seen as abuses of power by comparing America in the Vietnam era to the country during the Civil War.

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans.

When it came to the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara was an early advocate of escalation but came to realize the flaws in the American approach earlier than many of his colleagues. Yet in public, he continued to defend the war.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

Although one of the key justifications for the Vietnam war was to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. defeat was to produce nothing of the kind: apart from the fact that Cambodia and Laos became embroiled, the effects were essentially confined to Vietnam.

I had joined Marvel in 1967, after a year in Vietnam and three years as a student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Stan Lee, then the editor-in-chief, hired me as a production assistant.

Because the GIs were sent massively to South Vietnam, maybe it's a good idea to have a broadcast for them.

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

Any of these Vietnam vets that have been there and know the deal, they don't feel that any Hollywood endeavor about the Vietnam era has ever gotten it right yet.

I always felt more emotionally attached to Cambodia than I did to Vietnam.

'Matterhorn' is my metaphor of the Vietnam War - we built it, we abandoned it, we assaulted it, we lost, and then we abandoned it again.

But, you know, I just did a big trip in the spring to Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand, and that's when I bought a Kindle. I have like 15 books on this one little gizmo. But when I came home, the first night I picked up the book that was on my nightstand and I went right back to that.

In point of fact all Americans are automatically turned down by China these days because of the escalation of Johnson's war in Vietnam, which several times has intruded into China.

It seems to me the American people never really forgave the Democrats for being right about Vietnam.

I remember being a kid and the Vietnam War was huge and looking at Watergate.

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do

I have a band that I started with a buddy of mine, a Vietnam veteran pal named Kimo Williams from Chicago.

We were against the war in Vietnam and for voter registration and social issues. Everybody has their choices, and the obligation of a comedian is first to entertain. And if you're so inclined, and you have some bigger thought, make sure you express it, because that's a gift.

My opposition to the Vietnam War. I was the first Hollywood actor to speak out against it.

In 1975, the Americans suffered a spectacular military defeat at the hands of North Vietnam and the Vietcong, with U.S. helicopters seeking to rescue leading U.S. personnel from the tops of buildings as Vietnamese guerrillas closed in on the centre of Saigon.

In Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.

To win in Vietnam, we will have to exterminate a nation.

I went to Vietnam; it was my first assignment as a reporter for the UPI, and I never could get away from the war.

I'm not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.

I'm a Vietnam veteran. I was here when there was no public support, not just for the effort in Vietnam, for the mission in Vietnam, but for our men and women in uniform.

We've committed many war crimes in Vietnam - but I'll tell you something interesting about that. We were committing war crimes in World War II, before the Nuremberg trials were held and the principle of war crimes was stated.

Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there.

I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.

As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a 'war of choice' whose costs we are still paying.

For me, the way to approach a subject such as Vietnam is through storytelling.

The World War II generation believed the United States could do anything - anything... And Vietnam was a shattering experience for everyone.

I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam - the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers.

I'd rather go to Vietnam than get married.

I remember the day I found out my draft status. I was really floored and kind of staggered around in a daze. It just hadn't occurred to me that I could end up in Vietnam

Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.

I remember serving in Vietnam in that war, and many of us at the major Lieutenant Colonel, colonel level were frustrated that no one in the U.S. wanted to debate it that way.

After four or five different wars, I grew weary of that work, partly because in an open war, open to coverage, as Vietnam was, it's not that difficult, really.

I have been to several wars to draw. I went to Vietnam. And made drawings in Vietnam during that period of the war there, and found that to be a very very sad situation.

After Vietnam, the Democrats became fundamentally the anti-military as a party.

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.

My father left us when I was 10, so I had to make enough money for us to be able to live in a house because my brother went in the service during Vietnam and I was sole support of my mother. And she had no skills, really, except to clean other people's houses. So I had to have a bunch of jobs, you know, as well as music.

I think the new generations in America, the America's youth, no longer care about Vietnam. They don't want to hear any more about it.

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.

I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement.

The first 'Bad Company' was a kind of reaction to the Vietnam war - or at least a reaction to how Vietnam had entered the cultural life through films and books.

By the end of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?

There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the Left, which had been morally confused about Communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I.

Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency.

As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion - and I worried about it.

My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic.

Millions also perished in the Chinese camps, and there have been terrible genocides in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.

The Vietnam War totally turned my life around. Some people's lives were eliminated or destroyed by the experience. I was one of the fortunate few who came out better off.

Back in the old Corp, we weren't training those privates to infiltrate into the peacetime Marine Corp. We were training those privates to go to Vietnam.

Communications are better now than in my Vietnam days.

Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn't have happened.

I wanted to have the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and Sydney, and have the chance to work there.

I had a very strong feeling about the Vietnam War, and I had a strong feeling about participating in it. The military draft was in place, I was summoned for a physical exam, and I was either going to be classified as fit for military service or make my objection to it. So I made my objection to it.

Vietnam is often called our only uncensored war, but that only means that the government wasn't vetting the pictures and words.

My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.

Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.

Many of the architects of the Vietnam War became near pariahs as they spent the remainder of their lives in the futile quest to explain away their decisions at the time.

When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

One of the sharp parallels is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq was the slightest threat to America's national security.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

During the Cold War, America undertook serious military cuts only once: after the election of Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War. The result: Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, and American influence around the globe waned dramatically.

If John Kerry had a dollar for every time he bragged about serving in Vietnam - oh wait, he does.

I wasn't for Vietnam. When I told that to the hippie newspaper, all my people got nervous.

I didn't come here without a visa, like everyone from China and Vietnam and Cuba. I came here by special plane... received by the ambassador, by the president of the United States. I should be the most honored man in your country.

But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn't be drafted until we were 20.

In the '60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know?

Canada should always open its doors to those who are oppressed or in cases of emergency. When Canada offered refuge to 50,000 boat people in Vietnam in the 1970s, I was particularly proud to be Canadian.

Vietnam was really an idealistic thing to stop the spread of communism, which, incidentally, it did. It was a pretty costly way to do it, but it achieved its goal.

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it).

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

To me, Columbine is just as awful as Vietnam, and it's just as awful as anything else.

Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.

There's never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it's mostly a fabrication.