Vietnam 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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• How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

  John F. Kerry

  Mistake, Men, Lasts

  Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 22 Apr. 1971

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• Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Brother, Children, War

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

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• The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.

  J. William Fulbright

  Peace, War, Government

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• America is not fighting to win a war. We are fighting to give an application to an old Greek proverb, which is that the purpose of war is not to annihilate an enemy but to get him to mend his ways. And we are confident we can get the enemy to mend his.

  Arthur Goldberg

  War, Fighting, Winning

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• Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Success, Military, Congratulations

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.211, Best Books on

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• I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.

  Barry Goldwater

  Peace, War, Mud Puddles

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• I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.

  Sammy Davis, Jr.

  War, President, President Nixon

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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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• Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.

  Dalton Trumbo

  Morning, War, Coffee

  Dalton Trumbo (2007). “Johnny Got His Gun”, p.23, Kensington Publishing Corp.

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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, Way

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

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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, Proud

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• President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.

  William Westmoreland

  Brother, Military, War

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

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Film

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• It's a weird scene. You win a few baseball games and all of a sudden you're surrounded by reporters and TV men with cameras asking you about Vietnam and race relations.

  Vida Blue

  Baseball, Winning, Men

  Vida Blue, Bill Libby (1972). “Vida: His Own Story”, Prentice Hall

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• 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.

  Margaret Atwood

  War, Safe, Canada

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• I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that.

  George McGovern

  Regret, War, Guy

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• If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Men, America, Long

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

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• Hollywood never knew there was a Vietnam War until they made the movie.

  Jerry Stiller

  War, Hollywood, Made

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that.

  Ang Lee

  War, America, Japan

  Interview with Liev Schreiber, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 28, 2009.

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• Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka.

  James Buchan

  Suicide, War, Struggle

  "A history of suicide killers" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. September 17, 2001.

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• 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.

  Sam Elliott

  Hollywood, Vets, Eras

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• Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Military, Self, Play

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• You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.

  Richard M. Nixon

  War, Should, Force

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• 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.

  Hugo Black

  War, Government, Afterlife

  "New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713". Concurring opinion, 1971.

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