Top 100 For Vietnam Quotes
#1. Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam.
Don DeLillo
#2. Some Kennedy aides have always insisted that Johnson misread J.F.K.'s plans for Vietnam. They say that Kennedy had begun to rethink the U.S. presence in Indochina and was reluctant to increase it.
Robert Dallek
#3. These men were wrongfully rejected, the veterans. The fighting man should never have been blamed for Vietnam.
Neil Sheehan
#4. Although I wasn't able to get a visa for Vietnam, I was able to talk with swift boat veterans to get a feel for the time and place, and I visited a tropical prison in the Philippines to get a sense of what a Vietnamese prison might have been like.
Tony Hillerman
#5. I wasn't for Vietnam. When I told that to the hippie newspaper, all my people got nervous.
Loretta Lynn
#7. As for Vietnam, what matters is that Kennedy successfully resisted pressure to send anything more than military advisers, a stance that was a likely prelude to complete withdrawal from the conflict. There is solid evidence of his eagerness to end America's military role in that country's civil war.
Robert Dallek
#8. I would caution anyone who thinks the solution is to get out to realize that Iraq will be our problem, whether we're there or not, for years to come. It will not be Vietnam; it will not let us go home and lick our wounds.
George Packer
#9. I'm looking to be shot any time I step out of my car ... If I die, it will be in a good cause. I've been fighting for America just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam.
Medgar Evers
#10. The malaise and military decline of the post-Vietnam years under President Jimmy Carter set the stage for Russian aggression abroad and uncertainty among our allies.
Paul Cook
#11. What is in the Constitution is the burning desire and aspiration of all the people of Vietnam. So for the moment, we don't think about opposition parties.
Nong Duc Manh
#12. Some people think my father was a spy, because of working for that government agency in Vietnam, but he can't find his car keys, much less keep a national secret.
Lauren Graham
#13. When I wrote War Against the Mafia as a Vietnam statement, I didn't expect much to come of it-but quite a bit came and it captured me. I continued the books to feed the obvious hunger that was there for heroic fiction.
Don Pendleton
#14. More Medals of Honor were given for the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children than for any battle in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.
Aaron Huey
#15. When it came to political power, blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights, and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.
Andrea Mitchell
#16. We [Vietnam] happen to offer good investment opportunities for foreigners, although this is not a one-way street. Both we and the foreign investors benefit greatly as a result.
Nguyen Minh Triet
#17. Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.
Helen Thomas
#18. 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
#19. The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them.
John F. Kerry
#20. Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.
Robert Kiyosaki
#21. During Vietnam, I was in college, enjoying my student deferment. The government wisely felt that, in my case, military service was less important than completing my studies to prepare me for my chosen career: comedian.
Al Franken
#22. I learned long ago on the battlefields of Vietnam that in a crisis, there is no substitute for clear-eyed leadership.
Jim Webb
#23. I spent about seven years during the Vietnam War flight-testing airplanes for the Air Force. And then I went in and I had a lot of fun building airplanes that people could build in their garages. And some 3,000 of those are flying. Of course, one of them is around-the-world Voyager.
Burt Rutan
#24. Individual rights always go along with the interests of the society. I want to add that in Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.
Nong Duc Manh
#25. You have left too much of yourself in this land for it not to be yours. I, too, will always be yours, for you have left too much of yourself with me for it to be otherwise.
Nicholas Proffitt
#26. 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
#27. I'm not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.
Benjamin Spock
#28. Vous travaillez pour l'armee, madame?' (You are working for the army?), a Frenchwoman said to me early in the Vietnam war, on hearing I had three sons.
Adrienne Rich
#29. I'm sure it is, I'm not for any kind of war, we've been engaged in several wars since the second world war and we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, they are political wars, they have nothing to do with any real threat, nor does this one.
Larry Hagman
#30. The Americans won't win. They're not fighting for their homeland. They just want to be good. In order to be good, they just have to fight awhile and then leave.
Denis Johnson
#31. Because the GIs were sent massively to South Vietnam, maybe it's a good idea to have a broadcast for them.
Hanoi Hannah
#32. I know this: that in your own hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam War as I am for killing these people.
Charles Manson
#33. In the 1980s, Vietnam emerged in our culture as a legitimate and compelling topic for discussion rather than something to be hidden in shame.
Bobbie Ann Mason
#34. A real program of social and economic reform [in Vietnam] would have involved a real conflict ... between the peasants ... and the landlords and the city people ... [it] was difficult ... because it required a concern for the peasants ... it was those capacities ... its American supporters lacked.
Frances FitzGerald
#35. I went to Vietnam, and I was there for a long time. [Using marijuana] made the difference between staying human or, as Michael Douglas said, becoming a beast.
Oliver Stone
#36. Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.
Dick Morris
#37. McNamara's plea was that he had no idea that Vietnam had a history of longing for self-determination, a history of resisting foreign invasion.
Morley Safer
#38. Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me.
Yusef Komunyakaa
#39. 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
#40. We respect the freedom of all citizens. Young people should have fun, but there is no tolerance of drug abuse. Drugs have become a serious problem in Vietnam. This is why we have very strict penalties for any sort of drug dealing.
Nguyen Minh Triet
#41. I had a very strong feeling about the Vietnam War, and I had a strong feeling about participating in it. The military draft was in place, I was summoned for a physical exam, and I was either going to be classified as fit for military service or make my objection to it. So I made my objection to it.
Harrison Ford
#42. I went to Vietnam; it was my first assignment as a reporter for the UPI, and I never could get away from the war.
Neil Sheehan
#43. A lot of people have warned President Clinton that Bosnia will turn into another Vietnam, which would be embarrassing for him because he'll have to go back to college.
Bill Maher
#44. 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
#45. By the end of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?
William Westmoreland
#46. If I had that kind of money, I wouldn't come to Vietnam, I'd send for it.
Bob Hope
#47. 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.
#48. I couldn't be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard, because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War.
Larry David
#49. My legs are still shaking. I was gone for less than twenty minutes and only went about half a mile, but I feel like I'm back from a tour in Vietnam. This is really fucked up. I thought I'd feel like the hero of an action movie. Truth is, I feel like prey who doesn't know where the hunters are.
Manel Loureiro
#50. 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
#51. I lied about serving in Vietnam, and I'm sorry. I did not mean to take away from the actions and the sacrifices of the ones who did really serve there ... I did steal valor. That was very wrong of me. There is no real excuse for that.
Brian Dennehy
#52. We were against the war in Vietnam and for voter registration and social issues. Everybody has their choices, and the obligation of a comedian is first to entertain. And if you're so inclined, and you have some bigger thought, make sure you express it, because that's a gift.
Tom Smothers
#53. The majority of the American population had questioned the justification for the war in Vietnam. They did not appreciate the government's rationale for sending American boys to die halfway around the world; communists in Vietnam had absolutely nothing to do with them.
Calvin Murphy
#54. We certainly see opportunities in Vietnam for talented people to have jobs in the IT sector, including the improvement of the efficiency of the economy and the government.
Bill Gates
#55. Vietnam should have taught us that mindless anti-Communism is not a cause worth killing or dying for in a world in which Communism is hardly a monolithic force.
Pete Hamill
#56. Dare I ask Mao and his Communist Party?
I fear my throat will be cut into two pieces.
In the name of revolution, for thought crimes,
Such questions can turn me to ashes.
Zoe S. Roy
#57. Nothing existed outside ourselves and school. For us, the world of politics, social revolution, the war in Vietnam never happened.
Rachel Klein
#58. Consider, for instance, the recent war in Vietnam in which the United States was driven not by any realistic economic or political interest but by the overwhelming need to defeat atheistic communism.
Ernest Becker
#59. If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.
Kurt Vonnegut
#60. My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic.
Walter Dean Myers
#61. I'm sure that President Johnson would never have pursued the war in Vietnam if he'd ever had a Fulbright to Japan, or say Bangkok, or had any feeling for what these people are like and why they acted the way they did. He was completely ignorant.
J. William Fulbright
#62. Korea taught me nothing, for no one spoke of it when I was growing up, except as something about how wonderful the girls in Japan were. Vietnam taught some of us more than we perhaps ever wished to know.
Gloria Emerson
#63. If wars create vast sums of money for the global elite, is it possible the Soviets, the Viet Cong and Muslim extremists were, or are, also fabricated enemies of the West along with North Korea? Or at least exaggerated threats?
James Morcan
#64. I hated him for making me stop hating him
Tim O'Brien
#65. For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp.
Joe Klein
#66. My dad once told me that his biggest challenge after returning from Vietnam had been coming to terms with his own callousness. He'd made a deal with the war and traded his humanity for a ticket home.
Tucker Elliot
#67. We also can't try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis. That's not leadership; that's a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately weakens us. It's the lesson of Vietnam, of Iraq - and we should have learned it by now.
Barack Obama
#68. For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances, you can't help but love.
Tim O'Brien
#69. Hell had been his Vietnam. It had stamped its mark on him for all eternity, and no amount of denial or self-imposed ignorance was going to change it. Ever.
Joe Schreiber
#70. It was a tough press conference for President Bush. He spent the first ten minutes trying to pronounce Fallujah ... Bush insisted that Iraq is not Vietnam. Of course not, he avoided Vietnam.
David Letterman
#71. If John Kerry had a dollar for every time he bragged about serving in Vietnam - oh wait, he does.
Ann Coulter
#72. 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
#73. They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#74. In 2003, Congress authorized the construction of a visitor center for the Vietnam Memorial to help provide information and educate the public about the memorial and the Vietnam War.
Dennis Cardoza
#75. I support engagement, diplomacy, and trade with Cuba, China, Vietnam, and many countries with less than stellar human rights records, because I believe that once enslaved people taste freedom and see the products of capitalism, they will become hungry for freedom themselves.
Rand Paul
#76. I know of no scholar more dedicated to bringing a thorough and accurate portrayal of America's involvement in Vietnam than Mark Moyar. Everyone who is interested in a full picture of that oft-misunderstood war should be grateful for his effort.
Jim Webb
#77. Emmy Lou Harris introduced me to the work of the Vietnam Veterans of America foundation and the Campaign for a Land Mine Free World.
Mary Chapin Carpenter
#78. Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.
Michael Ignatieff
#79. When you have a democratically elected president of Iran you don't topple him for the Shah. You don't help topple Arbenz in Guatemala. You don't do what we did in Vietnam, etc.
Matt Gonzalez
#80. When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn't lose a parent for good.
Fred Wilson
#81. President Bush's campaign is now attacking John Kerry for throwing away some of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. Bush did not have any medals to throw away, but in his defense he did have all his services records thrown out.
Jay Leno
#82. When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.
William Westmoreland
#83. I'm a Vietnam veteran. I was here when there was no public support, not just for the effort in Vietnam, for the mission in Vietnam, but for our men and women in uniform.
Michael Mullen
#84. [Robert] Capa: He was a good friend and a great and very brave photographer. It is bad luck for everybody that the percentages caught up with him. It is especially bad for Capa. (On Capa's death in Vietnam, May, 27, 1954)
Ernest Hemingway,
#85. Kerry is saying that Bush never showed up for his national guard duty ... and now Bush is on the attack. He's accusing John Kerry of ducking time in the national guard by hiding out in the jungles of Vietnam.
Jay Leno
#86. Vietnam should remind conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder.
Karl Hess
#87. I would not trade you a billion dollars for the kids I led to combat in Vietnam or in fact any of the Marines that I served with for a quarter of a century.
Oliver North
#88. Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it).
Rick Perlstein
#89. When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to prepare to evacuate or climb to their mezzanines with their valuable family possessions.
Martin Parr
#90. 'In Country' is about a high school girl's quest for knowledge about her father, who died in Vietnam just before she was born.
Bobbie Ann Mason
#91. I guess it was hard for him to look at the logic behind the draft lotteries, because that same logic had taken away his father. And, anyway, what's so logical about the day you were born deciding when you might die? That's just a cruel joke, as I see it.
A.S. King
#92. I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something. But I couldnt figure out a polite way to ask.
P. J. O'Rourke
#93. 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
#94. While they trace their history back to wars that helped to ethnically cleanse Native Americans and to their exploits in the Civil War fighting for the South, the modern-day Rangers were created to help rejuvenate a defeated and demoralized U.S. imperialism after the war in Vietnam.
Brendan Sexton III
#95. There were stories that the tunnels went for miles. There were monsters down there, blind reptiles and insects that had never seen the light, there were hospitals and brothels, and horrible things, piles of the offal from VC atrocities, dead babies, assassinated priests.
Denis Johnson
#96. I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it.
George McGovern
#97. The campaign for the White House is heating up with John Kerry taking heat for throwing his Vietnam medals away, getting a $1000 haircut, and wearing a 1970s wig known as 'the Leno.' There are really two sides to this story. And America can't wait for Kerry to present both of them.
David Letterman
#98. 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
#99. For me, the way to approach a subject such as Vietnam is through storytelling.
Tim O'Brien
#100. Thank you for the sacrifices you and your families are making. Our Vietnam Veterans have taught us that no matter what are positions may be on policy, as Americans and patriots, we must support all of our soldiers with our thoughts and our prayers.
Zack Wamp
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
