#vietnam

Being stubborn won't make you fluent. Practicing will! The more mistakes you make, the more you'll learn not to. ↗

— Thanhha Lai

#classic #hope #hope-and-despair #insideoutandbackagain #learning

The kids filed quietly to the edge of the strip to wait for the helicopters. Other Marines stopped to watch them, wanting to say an encouraging word yet not daring to break into their private world — a world no longer shared with ordinary people. Some of them were experiencing the last hour of that brief mystery called life. ↗

— Karl Marlantes

#vietnam #war #life

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years. ↗

— Muhammed Ali

#freedom #jail #slavery #vietnam-war #equality

I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#am #american #american foreign policy #consequences #died

So one important lesson of Vietnam is, the first casualty of an unwise and unjust war are the American troops called on to fight it. Their service should be honored. ↗

— Paul Begala

#american troops #called #casualty #fight #first

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do. ↗

— Hugo Black

#founders #government #hoped #led #newspapers

South Vietnam had to be built from scratch and, from the very beginning, depended far too much on the Western superpowers. As in the case of a person on public welfare, this dependency, which became greater with each day, was quite difficult to shake. ↗

— Nguyen Cao Ky

#beginning #built #case #day #depended

It's a weird scene. You win a few baseball games and all of a sudden you're surrounded by reporters and TV men with cameras asking you about Vietnam and race relations. ↗

— Vida Blue

#asking #ball games #baseball #cameras #few

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

#campaign #emmy #foundation #free #free world

In 2003, Congress authorized the construction of a visitor center for the Vietnam Memorial to help provide information and educate the public about the memorial and the Vietnam War. ↗

— Dennis Cardoza

#authorized #center #congress #construction #educate