Quotes About Vietnam Veterans

#1. A deep-cover squad tried to infiltrate the far left by posing as politically radicalized Vietnam veterans well supplied with guns and drugs. Four or five of them liked their new lives so much that they never came back.

Tim Weiner

#2. I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode.

Maya Lin

#3. One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you'd see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

George H. W. Bush

#4. Everybody respects the Vietnam Veterans of America.

R. Lee Ermey

#5. I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war.

Jane Fonda

#6. Widowhood conferred a mystery and status divorce lacked. The difference between returning World War II and Vietnam veterans. Both had been through a war, but a judgmental public conferred glory only on those who had been victimized in a socially acceptable manner.

Nevada Barr

#7. But despite their heroic acts, the Vietnam Veterans of America continued to struggle to establish a combat badge in honor of these brave pilots and medics.

Tim Holden

#8. 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

#9. America owed its military renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s to Vietnam. Veterans like Norman Schwartzkopf, Colin Powell, Alfred Grey, Charles Krulak, and Wesley Clark returned home angry and ashamed at their defeat and rebuilt all-volunteer, professional armed forces from the ground up.

Michael Ignatieff

#10. I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war.

Robert Jay Lifton

#11. By 1989, the total number of Vietnam veterans who had died in violent accidents or by suicide after the war exceeded the total number of American soldiers who died during the war.

Vladislav Tamarov

#12. 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

#13. I think ex-Soviet or Russian-Jewish women are tougher and that comes through. And if they are more pragmatic than the men, it's because they are obliged to be. They have all the female responsibilities and all the male responsibilities.

David Bezmozgis

#14. Technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age.

Charles Duhigg

#15. 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

#16. When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.

Maya Lin

#17. Normally I hate people who whine all the time, but in your case, it would be okay to complain. Be selfish, say what you want once in a while. It's okay to let yourself be sad. -Kyo talking to Tohru

Natsuki Takaya

#18. The object of my relationship with Vietnam has been to heal the wounds that exist, particularly among our veterans, and to move forward with a positive relationship, ... Apparently some in the Vietnamese government don't want to do that and that's their decision.

Ho Chi Minh

#19. Well, look at what people are doing for returned veterans now. The wounded warriors. They're working hard to make the wounded veterans feel that they are loved and welcomed home, unlike Vietnam. It was not a very kind, gentle world then. I think we are kinder and gentler.

Barbara Bush

#20. Avoid career traps such as pursuing jobs that require you to sell your limited supply of time while preparing you for nothing better.

Scott Adams

#21. I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant.

John F. Kennedy

#22. The defense of the great works of Western literature can no longer be undertaken by central institutional power though it is hard to see how the normal operation of learned institutions, including recruitment can manage without them.

Harold Bloom

#23. I was counsel on the full veterans committee, the first Vietnam veteran to serve as a full-committee counsel in Congress. It stunned me that there was a 600,000-case backlog of claims. During my time in the Senate, it became 900,000.

Jim Webb

#24. Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything.

Ronald Reagan

#25. I had lots of friends who were fighting in Vietnam and I am still friends with veterans of the war.

Gordon Lightfoot

#26. In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jan Karon

#27. I ask you, what good is a big picture window and the lavish appointments and a priceless decor in a home if there is no mother there?

Spencer W. Kimball

#28. These men were wrongfully rejected, the veterans. The fighting man should never have been blamed for Vietnam.

Neil Sheehan

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.

George Bernard Shaw

#32. I always thought it was the saddest and most devastating ending. How you could have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself smaller over time. I don't want that to happen to me.

Meg Wolitzer

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. We pretended there was no problem with Agent Orange after Vietnam and later the Pentagon recanted, after untold suffering by veterans.

Jim McDermott

#36. When I crawled down the rabbit hole into the pivotal event of my life--indeed the pivotal event of my generation--to write "Escape from Saigon - a Novel" I never expected it to be such an emotional journey into a life I left four decades ago.

Dick Pirozzolo

#37. The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn't who they are; the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.

Robert Koger

#38. Truth has a resonance to it that fills the cracks where falsehoods lie.

Rick DeStefanis