Overview & key questions
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Vietnam War quotes
"Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place."
- John F. Kennedy, 1961 -
"We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 -
"If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow well be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco."
- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965 -
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas."
- Ronald Reagan, 1965 -
"People ask me who my heroes are. I admire Hitler because he pulled his country together when it was in a terrible state in the early thirties. But the situation here is so desperate now that one man would not be enough. We need four or five Hitlers in Vietnam."
- Nguyen Cao Ky, 1965 -
"Their casualties are going up at a rate they cannot sustain..... I see light at the end of the tunnel."
- Walt Whitman Rostow, 1967 -
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours."
- Martin Luther King Jr., 1967 -
"The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of U.S. aggression, they have risen up, united as one man, fearless of sacrifices and hardships."
- Ho Chi Minh, 1967 -
"Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved."
- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968 -
"Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that."
- Richard M. Nixon, 1969 -
"This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart."
- Frank Church, 1970 -
"Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world."
- Gerald Ford, 1975 -
"Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish."
- Henry Kissinger, 1979 -
"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now."
- Richard M. Nixon, 1985 -
"Its not that we lost the war militarily. The fact is, we as a nation did not make good our commitment to the South Vietnamese."
- William C. Westmoreland, 1985 -
- John F. Kennedy, 1961 -
"We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 -
"If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow well be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco."
- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965 -
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas."
- Ronald Reagan, 1965 -
"People ask me who my heroes are. I admire Hitler because he pulled his country together when it was in a terrible state in the early thirties. But the situation here is so desperate now that one man would not be enough. We need four or five Hitlers in Vietnam."
- Nguyen Cao Ky, 1965 -
"Their casualties are going up at a rate they cannot sustain..... I see light at the end of the tunnel."
- Walt Whitman Rostow, 1967 -
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours."
- Martin Luther King Jr., 1967 -
"The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of U.S. aggression, they have risen up, united as one man, fearless of sacrifices and hardships."
- Ho Chi Minh, 1967 -
"Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved."
- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968 -
"Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that."
- Richard M. Nixon, 1969 -
"This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart."
- Frank Church, 1970 -
"Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world."
- Gerald Ford, 1975 -
"Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish."
- Henry Kissinger, 1979 -
"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now."
- Richard M. Nixon, 1985 -
"Its not that we lost the war militarily. The fact is, we as a nation did not make good our commitment to the South Vietnamese."
- William C. Westmoreland, 1985 -
Impact of the Vietnam War
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Revisions, test papers, resource links, quiz and answers
- Vietnam War Quiz Answers provided.