Quotes: Vietnam

I’m happy that I’m alive. I feel like someone coming back from Vietnam, you know; I’m sure that later on I’ll start killing people in a square somewhere, but right now, I just feel happy to be alive.

It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam. If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail.

I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 – in which the government tried to block the The New York Times and The Washington Post that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam – that is probably the most important case.

I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.

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.

At least I’m at peace with myself. I have done my best to write a book about what really happened there and why it happened and it’s done, it’s published. I won’t write another book on Vietnam.

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.

I felt just overwhelmed by input: the Vietnam war and the collapse of the ’60s and the proliferation of media’ it just felt like everything was too much to handle and you just tuned out.

I went to Kent State basically to avoid going to Vietnam, I had no idea what I was doing in the world. I was lost, and trying not to get into a fight every day.

Philadelphia reflected the national turmoil over race and the Vietnam War, often exploding on my watch.