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Vietnam Quotes

“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.”

IfsWayLoveMeanAsksCommonWonderWonderfulFiguresPersonalityVietnamPoliteReally Mean
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“The more innocuous the name of a weapon, the more hideous its impact. Some of the most horrific weapons of the Vietnam era were named Bambi, Infant, Daisycutter, Grasshopper, and Agent Orange. Nor is the trend new: From the past we have Mustard Gas, Angel Chasers [two can-nonballs linked with a chain for added destruction], and the Peacemaker, to name a few.)”

TwoPastNamesWeaponsAngelDestructionImpactChainsAgentsErasGasTrendsVietnamOrangeLinkedInfantHideousHorrificPeacemakerMustardGrasshoppersChasersCannonballsMustard GasAgent Orange
Author:Paul Dickson
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“During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in - and which we lost - every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

WorldWarCountryAmericaArtistTurnsLostFeetModernSixWeaponsVietnamPieModern WorldRespectableVietnam WarBeamLasersCustard
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it's your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”

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Book:Civil Wars
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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%.”

YearsTwoWarPoliticalPresidentEconomicHugeOne DayYears AgoBillsUnionsInvestmentInvestingOilThirtyExpensiveShockYieldDistractionInvestorsVietnamSovietExpansionBusinessmanSoviet UnionVietnam WarThirty YearsResignationTreasuryDissolutionForecastsForeseenTreasury Bill
Author:Warren Buffett
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“Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not, given the scars scoured into the national psyche by defeat in Southeast Asia. For all the differences between the two conflicts, and there are many, echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable.”

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Author:R. W. Apple
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“During Richard Nixon’s first term, when I served as secretary of defense, we withdrew U.S. forces from Vietnam while building up the South’s ability to defend itself. The result was a success - until Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975. Washington should follow a similar strategy now, but this time finish the job properly.”

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Author:Melvin Laird
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“I think most of us secretly know – and those of us at the radical middle are inclined to say – that without such concepts as duty and honor and service, no civilization can endure. ... I suspect most Americans would respond positively to a [draft] if it gives us some choice in how to exercise that duty and service. ... Exactly the kind of choice my generation did not have during the Vietnam War.”

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Author:Mark Satin
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“The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long. The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.”

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Author:Bill Ayers
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“America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help-because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.”

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Author:Martha Gellhorn
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“None of the people's wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968...Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops...Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated and amounted to no more than 20% of the communist fighting forces.”

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Author:Chalmers Johnson
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“Neoconservatives and the Pentagon have good reason to fear the return of the Vietnam Syndrome. The label intentionally suggests a disease, a weakening of the martial will, but the syndrome was actually a healthy American reaction to false White House promises of victory, the propping up of corrupt regimes, crony contracting and cover-ups of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War that are echoed today in the news from Baghdad.”

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Book:Writings For A Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader
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“Rising sea levels will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people flooded each year with a warming of 3 or 4°C. There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in South East Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, New York, Miami and London.”

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Author:Nicholas Stern
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“The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to allow various intelligence operations to wring the last few hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits from the global drug scam; then defeat will have to be declared. "Defeat" will mean, as it did in the case of the Vietnam War, that the media will correctly portray the true dimensions of the situation and the real players, and that public revulsion at the culpability, stupidity and venality of the Establishment's role will force a policy review.”

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Author:Terence McKenna
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“We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.”

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Author:Lyndon B. Johnson
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“We understand that Nixon's aggression against Vietnam is a racist aggression, that the American war in Vietnam is a racist war, a white man's war...We deplore that you are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism. We've seen photographs of American bombs and antipersonnel weapons being dropped, wantonly, accidentally perhaps, on your heads, on the heads of your comrades.”

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Author:Jane Fonda
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