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

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  155 Copy quote

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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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• 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.

  11 Copy quote

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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

  13 Copy quote

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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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• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Peace, Kings

  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 16 Apr. 1963

  95 Copy quote

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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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• Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.

  Omar N. Bradley

  War, Evil, Nuclear Missiles

  18 Copy quote

• America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help-because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Hurt, War, Heart

  52 Copy quote

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

  Frank Church

  Country, War, Generations

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Military, War, Misunderstood

  "No More Vietnams". Book by Richard M. Nixon, 1985.

  81 Copy quote

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• Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

  William Westmoreland

  Confused, Silly, Thinking

  23 Copy quote

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

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  War, Society, Vietnam

  24 Copy quote

• I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.

  Richard M. Nixon

  War, President, Vietnam

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• Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

  Michael Herr

  War, Childhood, Vietnam

  Dispatches ch. 3 (1977)

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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

  53 Copy quote

• I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.

  William Westmoreland

  War, Believe, Men

  66 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  23 Copy quote

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

  Mike Mansfield

  War, Vietnam, Able

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• When the strongest nation in the world can be tied up for years in a war with no end in sight, when the richest nation in the world can't manage its own economy, when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness, and when the President of the United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home without fear of a hostile demonstration - then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Leadership, War, Home

  49 Copy quote

• We still seek no wider war.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  War, Stills

  Broadcast speech, 4 Aug. 1964

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• If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.

  Curtis LeMay

  War, Criminals, Lost

  68 Copy quote