Vietnam Quotes - Page 16

• You don't have to be Dave Halberstam to see that the American role in both conflicts [the Iraq war and the Vietnam conflict] is characterized by arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion at the highest levels of government.

  Jonathan Yardley

  War, Ignorance, Government

  "David Halberstam". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. April 24, 2007.

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• I was lost, and that war [in Vietnam] was very alienating - not that I was against it or for it, but I was just lost after that war. As were many Americans.

  Oliver Stone

  War, Lost

  Source: collider.com

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• So now it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was having sex with Sally Hemings while serving in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War.

  Ann Coulter

  Sex, War, Airborne

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• For years, Mount Holyoke professor Joseph 'Full Metal Jacket' Ellis had been regaling students, interviewers and friends with gripping stories of his service in Vietnam.

  Ann Coulter

  Years, Stories, Students

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• For educated Americans like Joseph Ellis, Vietnam is a special hang-up. I am an Englishman of exactly the Vietnam generation, a couple of years younger than Ellis; indeed, for reasons too complicated to explain here, I was nearly drafted into the US army in 1965. I know many Americans of my own age and, as much to the point, my own class - journalists, publishers, lawyers. And I don't think I know one who served in Vietnam.

  Geoffrey Wheatcroft

  Couple, Army, Thinking

  "Not so macho" by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2001.

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• 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.

  Bob Gunton

  War, Order, Signatures

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

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• I was a grunt, walking around in the jungle of Vietnam, trying not to find the enemy. Because I am so big, they were going to give me either a heavy radio or a huge machine gun to carry. I carried a radio.

  Bob Gunton

  Gun, Giving, Enemy

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

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• If development was measured not by gross national product, but a society's success in meeting the basic needs of its people, Vietnam would have been a model. That was its real "threat." From the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to 1972, primary and secondary school enrollment in the North increased sevenfold, from 700,000 to almost five million. In 1980, UNESCO estimated a literacy rate of 90 percent and school enrollment among the highest in Asia and throughout the Third World.

  John Pilger

  Real, School, People

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• The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.

  Adrienne Rich

  Wall, War, Grief

  Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.91, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Freedom-loving people around the world must say . . . I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism.

  Ronald Reagan

  People, Nicaragua, World

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches”, p.265, Simon and Schuster

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• I would like to ask a question. Would this sort of war or savage bombing which has taken place in Vietnam have been tolerated for so long, had the people been European?

  Indira Gandhi

  War, Taken, Long

  Indira Gandhi (1984). “Selected Speeches of Indira Gandhi: September 1972-March 1977”

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• Men, also, have in them enormous capacities that they have to repress and fear in themselves, living up to this obsolete and brutal man-eating, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian sadistic, napalm all the children in Vietnam, bang-bang you're dead, image of masculinity, the image of all powerful masculine superiority that is absolute.

  Betty Friedan

  Children, Powerful, Men

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• I never would've imagined in the first part of my life that I could've stood up and said anything. The war in Vietnam changed me. I was so angry. Some of my speeches probably weren't well considered.

  Jane Fonda

  War, Speech, Firsts

  "Jane Fonda on Men, Power and Plastic Surgery". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.glamour.com. January 31, 2007.

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• When I was in Vietnam I learned a lot about the promises that soldiers make to each other. The Marines have a promise to never leave behind their dead. In this country, as citizen soldiers, we need to make the commitment to each other that we will never leave our veterans behind.

  John F. Kerry

  Country, Commitment, Marine

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• Labels not only free us from the obligation to think creatively; they numb our sensibilities, our power to feel. During the Vietnam War, the phrase body count entered our vocabulary. It is an ambiguous phrase, inorganic, even faintly sporty. It distanced us from the painful reality of corpses, of dead, mutilated people.

  Paula Fox

  War, Reality, Thinking

  Paula Fox (2011). “News from the World: Stories and Essays”, p.150, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time.

  Alex Garland

  Book, Love You, Night

  Alex Garland (2005). “The Beach”, p.8, Penguin

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• we ought to realize by now (see Korea, see Vietnam, see Afghanistan, see Iraq, see Iran) that deploying the US military, or dealing billions of dollars a year of arms to our ally of the moment that can serve as a regional rival to our enemy of the moment, is not always the best way to make threats go away. Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn't make every international problem a nail.

  Rachel Maddow

  Military, Iran, Korea

  Rachel Maddow (2012). “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power”, p.251, Broadway Books

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• The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world.

  Sara Paretsky

  Littles, Able, Showing Up

  Sara Paretsky (2005). “Killing Orders”, Signet

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• The Vietnam war will not be over until it ends for everyone. Over four hundred thousand U.S. veterans are still recovering from wounds inflicted on their bodies and their spirit. Sixty-three million souls in Vietnam are still suffering from their 'victory.

  Le Ly Hayslip

  War, Soul, Suffering

  Le Ly Hayslip (2012). “When Heaven & Earth Change Places”, p.541, Doubleday

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• After visits to several Communist countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, East Germany, Vietnam, China, Cuba), I feel strongly that most "revolutionary" types around the world don't realize the importance of freedom of the press and the air, a right to peaceably assemble and discuss anything, including the dangers of such discussions.

  Pete Seeger

  Country, East Germany, Air

  Source: portside.org

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• My film isn't about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little we went insane.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Crazy, Insane, Littles

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• Movements are not radical. Movements are the American way. A small group of abolitionists writing and speaking eventually led to the end of slavery. A few stirred-up women brought about women's voting. The Populist movement, the Progressive movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women's movement - the examples go on and on of 'little people' getting together and telling the truth about their lives. They made our government act.

  Unita Blackwell

  War, Writing, Government

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• We have as a nation been duped by those who use our guilt about how we treated the innocent pawns in the Vietnam War game - the soldiers - into missing the point once again about the utter senselessness that is war.

  Steven Weber

  War, Games, Missing

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

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• So, Wesley Clark is running for president. Pretty amazing guy. Four star general, first in his class at West Point, supreme commander of NATO, saw combat in Vietnam, won the bronze star, silver star, the purple heart for being wounded in battle. See, I'm no political expert, but that sounds pretty good next to choking on a pretzel, falling off a scooter and dropping the dog.

  Jay Leno

  Running, Dog, Stars

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• The Philippines was with the U.S. in the Second World War, in the Korean War, in the Vietnam War, and now in the war against terrorism.

  Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

  War, Philippines, World

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