Vietnam War Quotes - Page 9

• The Vietnam War was so obviously evil and bore down most heavily upon working class youth that it made me think about things more deeply than I had before. It disillusioned me completely and forever about the government. And it made me aware that the media and the government lied almost as a matter of course. But it also opened my eyes to what was really going on in America.

  Michael Yates

  War, Eye, Thinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The dichotomies, the brokenness of the culture around things like the Vietnam war, and then a lot of it has to do with war and where we put our energy and money and attention. And the military industrial complex, which dominates our whole economy. Even with the vision of democracy in other places we know the dark side.

  Anne Waldman

  War, Military, Dark

  Source: logosjournal.com

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• We like to say medicare is uniquely Canadian, but Americans have Medicare too. Even the name. I can't actually determine where the name started, except that it appeared in the two countries at about the same time. Had the Vietnam War not occurred, the Americans would have had a Medicare system much like ours.

  Robert Bothwell

  Country, War, Medicare

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• In fact, it's pretty dramatic when you get to 1975, very revealing, the [Vietnam] war ends. Everybody had to write something about the war, what it meant. You also had polls of public opinion, and they're dramatically different.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Writing, Public Opinion

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• So if you look at the writings of intellectuals, there are two kinds. One said, l"Look, if we fought harder we could have won.But the others, who were way at the left, people like Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, way out in left stream, his view in 1975 was the Vietnam war began with blundering efforts to do good. But by 1969, it was clear that it was a disaster, that was too costly to us.

  Noam Chomsky

  New York, War, Writing

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• By that time [1966], we did begin to get some protests [against Vietnam War]. But not from liberal intellectuals; they never opposed the war.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Vietnam, Protest

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• If you look back to the anti-intervention movements, what were they? Let's take the Vietnam War - the biggest crime since the Second World War. You couldn't be opposed to the war for years. The mainstream liberal intellectuals were enthusiastically in support of the war. In Boston, a liberal city where I was, we literally couldn't have a public demonstration without it being violently broken up, with the liberal press applauding, until late 1966.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Boston, Years

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• I'm an old guy, and I was protesting during the Vietnam War. We killed fifty Asians for every loyal American. Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Country, War, Artist

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. June 12, 2003.

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• Indeed, often because of the size and weight in the world of our neighbor, we in Canada often define ourselves in contrast to American positions on things like Cuba, the Vietnam War and nuclear disarmament. Historically, Canada has not always been aligned with the United States. It doesn't necessarily serve anyone's interests - Canadian or American - to be seen as an extension of the United States.

  Justin Trudeau

  War, World, Neighbor

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The things I really cared about - poverty, the Great Society, civil rights - were all being drained away by the Vietnam War. The line that keeps running through my mind is the line I never spoke: "I can't speak for a war that I believe is immoral."

  Bill Moyers

  Running, War, Believe

  Source: progressive.org

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• Yes and no. Because America has only about 1 percent of the population serving in the military, it is hard for many civilians to understand the sacrifices military families make. However, my experience is that after the Vietnam War, the public learned that they should support the military whether or not they support the war. You've seen that outpouring of support for the veterans of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Steve Stivers

  War, Military, Sacrifice

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• The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination.

  Dean Baker

  Hate, War, People

  "Won’t You Please Come to Chicago?" by Dean Baker, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

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• Helvetica is the font of the Vietnam War.

  Paula Scher

  War, Vietnam, Fonts

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• My parents were true believers in the efficacy of American constitutional democracy, and I was thoroughly inculcated with reverence for what we the people are capable of doing. The complication in that simple narrative is that as I got older, the Vietnam War shook my confidence in how our democracy was working. I ended up serving in that war, but it started with a lie, and I was very proud of my father for being one of its earliest opponents.

  Al Gore

  Father, War, Lying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money." (On Vietnam War)

  Charles de Gaulle

  Money, Military, War

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• America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

  John le Carre

  War, Pigs, America

  "British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, “Our Kind of Traitor”". "Democracy Now" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. November 25, 2010.

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• Philip Jones Griffith documented the Vietnam War, and through his images that were published in Time Life Magazine, it showed me the horrors of war and at that time, I wanted to be a war photographer, based off his work.

  Jamel Shabazz

  War, Vietnam, Magazines

  Source: therumpus.net

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• At the moment people get on boats because they flee terror at home and believe the many years' long wait in UNHCR camps is not a valid option, especially if they have children in their care. After the Vietnam War, Australia took a larger humanitarian intake than at any other period in our history. The Australian community accepted that. They were told why we needed to do it, and why it was the only ethical decent policy that a wealthy advanced country should adopt.

  Malcolm Fraser

  Leadership, Country, Children

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• The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border of Afghanistan, I wrote to President Jimmy Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  War, Opportunity, Giving

  Source: www.marxists.org

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• Why was I in a basement saying, "I'm alone here," wielding a lead pipe and crowbars? It was like I was doing the Vietnam War. It was like I was being America. If I put a blindfold on, I can't see you as people, which seemed to be what the United States was doing. I mean, it was important for people in my generation, because I grew up in the '40s, at a time when America was supposedly the hero nation. America saved Europe. And, some years later, we realized, America is a criminal.

  Vito Acconci

  War, Hero, Mean

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• We had much more imagery from Vietnam war. The media was not controlled. The storyline, the master narrative was not controlled. I thin it was some those images really radicalized people and shifted things to some extent. And the Viet Cong also, their tenacity.

  Anne Waldman

  War, Media, People

  Source: logosjournal.com

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• Before I became President, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there had been fairly dramatic, and I think excessive, reductions in the capability of our military forces, and as a former military man myself - I was a professional naval officer, a submarine officer - I thought it was better, on a step-by-step, very carefully planned way, to increase the technical, or technological, capability of our weapons systems.

  Jimmy Carter

  Military, War, Men

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• I'd been a child during the 1960s when women burned their bras and hundreds of thousands gathered in protests against the Vietnam War. As a climber, I've felt connected to a similar nonconformist culture, one opposed to society's increasing materialism, pollution and corruption. Our approach to the rock—clean, traditional climbing, with the least dependence on equipment—was an extension of this ethical viewpoint.

  Lynn Hill

  Children, War, Rocks

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• We will continue to ignore political and economic forecasts, which are an expensive distraction for many investors and
  businessmen. Thirty years ago, no one could have foreseen the huge expansion of the Vietnam War, wage and price controls, two oil shocks, the resignation of a president, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a one-day drop in the Dow of 508 points, or treasury bill yields fluctuating between 2.8% and 17.4%.

  Warren Buffett

  War, Yield, Years

  Letter To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., www.berkshirehathaway.com. March 7, 1995.

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• When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

  Karl Marlantes

  War, Writing, Feet

  "A Vietnam Epic Uncovers Old Wounds: An Interview with Karl Marlantes". Interview with Evan James, www.motherjones.com. April 30, 2010.

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