Vietnam War Quotes

Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s

You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.

Richard M. Nixon, speech, April 16, 1954.

If in order to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and particularly in Indo-China, if in order to avoid it we must take the risk by putting American boys in, I believe that the executive branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.

John F. Kennedy, speech, New York Times, October 13, 1960.

Should I become President...I will not risk American lives...by permitting any other nation to drag us into the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time through an unwise commitment that is unwise militarily, unnecessary to our security and unsupported by our allies.

John F. Kennedy, 1961

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

Barry M. Goldwater, Why Not Victory?, 1962.

Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? - was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture.

Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964

Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.

Lyndon B. Johnson, statement after Gulf of Tonkin incident, August 4, 1964.

We still seek no wider war.

Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964

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.

Ronald Reagan, 1964

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.

Ronald Reagan, interview, Fresno Bee, October 10, 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.

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