Vietnam War Quotes

• I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.

  John F. Kerry

  Military, War, Struggle

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• All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.

  Michael Herr

  Military, Thinking, People

  1989 In the Observer, 15 Jan.

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• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Military, War

  Speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C., 16 Apr. 1953

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• Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Military, War, Taught Us

  "Quote for the Day II". The year 1979 quote, www.theatlantic.com. January 09, 2007.

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• Naturally the common people don't want war. . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . .

  Hermann Goring

  Country, War, Simple

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• Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Inspirational, Motivational, Military

  Quoted in Montreal Gazette, 16 May 1975

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• A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Change, Uplifting, Spiritual

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

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• If the Americans do not want to support us anymore, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!

  Nguyen Van Thieu

  War, Support, Promise

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• 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?

  Yoko Ono

  War, Thinking, Vietnam

  "Just imagine". Interview with Andrew Smith, www.theguardian.com. November 03, 2001.

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• Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? - was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture.

  Barry Goldwater

  War, Military, Goal

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• If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals.

  Robert McNamara

  War, Thinking, Criminals

  Robert S. McNamara (2004). “Official Teacher's Guide for The Fog of War: An Errol Morris Film”

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• I was not able to stop or slow down the Vietnam War.

  Mike Mansfield

  War, Vietnam, Able

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• If in order to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and particularly in Indo-China, if in order to avoid it we must take the risk by putting American boys in, I believe that the executive branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.

  Richard M. Nixon

  War, Believe, Boys

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• What can one say about a country where a museum of science in a great city can feature an exhibit in which people fire machine guns from a helicopter at Vietnamese huts, with a light flashing when a hit is scored? What can one say about a country where such an idea can even be considered? You have to weep for this country.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, War, Gun

  Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky (2010). “American Power and the New Mandarins”, p.28, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.

  Terry Gilliam

  War, Losing Control, Police

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• I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.

  Maya Lin

  War, Artist, Memorial

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

  John F. Kennedy

  Vietnam, Problem, Credible

  1961 Attributed remark to journalist James Reston, following Kennedy's meeting with Khrushchev, Jun.

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• This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart.

  Frank Church

  Country, War, Generations

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• We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Home, Boys, Asian

  Speech at Akron University, Akron, Ohio, 21 Oct. 1964

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• 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.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  War, Military, Vietnam

  News conference, 7 Apr. 1954

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• Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

  Hermann Goring

  Country, Peace, Military

  Interview in Göring's jail cell, April 18, 1946. "Nuremberg Diary". Book by Gustave Gilbert, 1947.

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• It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

  Ronald Reagan

  Funny, Christmas, Country

  Ronald Reagan (1968). “I goofed: the wise and curious sayings of Ronald Reagan, 33rd Governor of California”

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• It's time that we recognized that ours was in truth a noble cause.

  Ronald Reagan

  War, Noble, Causes

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• I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies.

  Benjamin Spock

  Baby, War, Vietnam

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• We still seek no wider war.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  War, Stills

  Broadcast speech, 4 Aug. 1964

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