Vietnam War Quotes - Page 2

• 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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• The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  War, President, Principles

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• The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

  Hermann Goring

  Country, Peace, Freedom

  Quoted in Gustave M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (1947).

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• When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

  Benjamin Franklin

  War, Arbitration, Compromise

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• It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.

  Peter Arnett

  Vietnam, Towns

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

  William Westmoreland

  Confused, Silly, Thinking

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• I see light at the end of the tunnel.

  Walt Whitman Rostow

  Positive, Humor, Vegas

  Walt Whitman Rostow (1955). “Russia and China Under Communism”

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• The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

  Stephen Vizinczey

  War, America, Atmosphere

  Stephen Vizinczey (1988). “Truth and Lies in Literature: Essays and Reviews”, p.197, University of Chicago Press

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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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• 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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Children, Military

  Speech in Washington, 16 Apr. 1953, in Public Papers of Presidents 1953 (1960) p. 182

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• It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

  Walter Cronkite

  Vietnam, Ends, Stalemate

  Walter Cronkite (1971). “The challenges of change”

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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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• This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Military, War, Struggle

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1965). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-1964”, p.931, Best Books on

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• This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Children, War, Military

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

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• To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.

  Walter Cronkite

  Believe, Past, Victory

  Walter Cronkite (1971). “The challenges of change”

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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, Vietnam, Should

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• In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Peace, War

  Ernest Hemingway (2008). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, Ecco

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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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• They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Death, Country, Sweet

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades”, p.189, Simon and Schuster

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• We believe that peace is at hand.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  War, Believe, Hands

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• Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Military, Vietnam, United States

  Address to the Nation on theWar in Vietnam, 3 Nov. 1969

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• If, when the chips are down, the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Powerful, America, United States

  Televised speech announcing offensive into Cambodia, 30 Apr. 1970

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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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• Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country-it had all been done in our name. . . . The French city . . . had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.

  James Fenton

  Country, Children, War

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• They were at the wrong place at the wrong time naturally they became heroes

  George Lucas

  Hero, Brokeback Mountain, Aces

  George Lucas (2011). “A New Hope: Star Wars: Episode IV”, p.2, Del Rey

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