Quotes · Skopia

32 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Vietnam War✕clear

Historical literature

I think that Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

Dispatches · 1977

★ 1.1

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not the battlefields of Vietnam.

Marshall McLuhan

1975

★ 1.7

Historical literature

Out on the street I couldn't tell the Vietnam veterans from the rock and roll veterans. The Sixties had made so many casualties, its war and its music had run power off the same circuit for so long they didn't even have to fuse.

Dispatches · 1977

★ 1.8

Historical literature

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the priniples and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribbly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

Robert McNamara

1995

★ 1.8

Radio broadcast

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

1970

★ 1.9

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?

1971

★ 1.9

Film · War (film) · War

Some of you think you have problems because you're against the war. You demonstrated in school, you wear peace symbols on your steel, and you have attitudes. I'm an orphan, my brother's queer, the city of Chicago got the clap from my sister, Mom drinks, Dad coughs blood, I have ringworm, immersion foot, the incurable crud and the draft ruined my chances of being a brain surgeon. People, you have no problem. Except me and him.

Sgt. Adam Frantz

Hamburger Hill · 1987

★ 1.9

Film · War (film) · War

On guard at night you'll write letters, play with your organ, and think of your girl back home. Forget her. Some hair head has her on her back right now and is telling her to fuck for peace.

Sgt. Adam Frantz

Hamburger Hill · 1987

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.

1969

★ 1.9

Film · War (film) · War

They come from the end of the line, most of 'em—small towns you never heard of: Pulaski, Tennessee; Brandon, Mississippi; Pork Bend, Utah; Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years' high school's about it. Maybe if they're lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. But most of 'em got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and our freedom. It's weird, isn't it? At the bottom of the barrel, they know it. Maybe that's why they call themselves "grunts", 'cause a grunt can take it—can take anything.

Platoon · 1986

★ 2.0

Film · Drama (film) · Drama

One day it started raining, and it didn’t quit for four months. We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin’ rain…and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways and sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rained at night.

Forrest Gump · 1994

★ 2.1

The United States could well declare unilaterally that this stage of the Vietnam war is over-that we have "won" in the sense that our Armed Forces are in control of most of the field and no potential enemy is in a position to establish its authority over South Vietnam.

1966

★ 3.4

TV news · TV program

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. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion.

Walter Cronkite

1968

★ 3.5

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

William C. Westmoreland

1982

★ 3.5

Speech · Political speech

I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake.

Wayne Lyman Morse

1964

★ 3.5

Film · War (film) · War

These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting.

Full Metal Jacket · 1987

★ 3.5

Speech · Political speech

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Lyndon B. Johnson

1964

★ 3.6

The Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina.

George McGovern

1973

★ 3.6

Film · Comedy (film) · Fantasy (film) · Comedy · Fantasy

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous is, ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia’ but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!’

The Princess Bride · 1987

★ 3.6

Speech · Political speech

We still seek no wider war.

Lyndon B. Johnson

1964

★ 3.7

Speech · Political speech

North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

1969

★ 3.7

Song · Soul music

Father, father We don't need to escalate You see, war is not the answer For only love can conquer hate.

What's Going On · 1971

★ 3.8

Film · War (film) · War

Somebody once wrote: "Hell is the impossibility of reason." That's what this place feels like. Hell.

Platoon · 1986

★ 3.8

Film · War (film) · War

I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy...was in us.

Platoon · 1986

★ 3.8

Song · Rock music

Some folks are born made to wave the flag, Ooh, that red, white, and blue. And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief," Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord, It ain't me, it ain't me I ain't no senator's son, no. It ain't me, it ain't me I ain't no fortunate one.

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Fortunate Son · 1969

★ 5.2

Song · Rock music

So they put a rifle in my hand Sent me off to a foreign land To go and kill the yellow man Born in the U. S. A.

Bruce Springsteen

Born in the U.S.A · 1984

★ 5.5

War literature · War

There was a famous story, some reporters asked a door gunner, "How can you shoot women and children?" and he'd answered, "It's easy, you just don't lead 'em so much."

Dispatches · 1977

★ 6.0

Film · Psychological drama (film) · War (film) · Psychological drama · War

In this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. 'Cause there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have one. Walt Kurtz has reached his and very obviously, he has gone insane.

General R. Corman

Apocalypse Now · 1979

★ 6.0

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

Walter Cronkite

1968

★ 6.9

If he had lost Walter Cronkite he had lost Mr. Average Citizen.

Lyndon B. Johnson

1968

★ 7.0

Film · Psychological drama (film) · War (film) · Psychological drama · War

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Apocalypse Now · 1979

★ 7.0

Press conference

I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.

1967

★ 7.4