Top 1200 South Vietnam Quotes & Sayings

None of the people's wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968...Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops...Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated and amounted to no more than 20% of the communist fighting forces.

We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.

Our young men in Vietnam have not only acquitted themselves in an outstanding manner during combat operations, but they also have been outstanding ambassadors of goodwill in the vital civic action and pacification work among the tortured populace of South Vietnam.

We could not bring democracy to South Vietnam at a cost that we were willing to accept. So it was a disaster. That' is the left extreme.

I'm a Vietnam veteran. I was here when there was no public support, not just for the effort in Vietnam, for the mission in Vietnam, but for our men and women in uniform.

What was the invasion of South Vietnam, for example, in 1962, when Kennedy sent the Air Force to bomb South Vietnam and start chemical warfare? That's aggression.

By the mid-sixties, the United States had poured more than half a million troops into South Vietnam.

The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That's gone. Of course, It is a part of real history. But it's not a part of official history.

This is the voice of Vietnam Broadcasting from Hanoi, capitol of the Democratic republic of Vietnam.

Kennedy was haunted by the Bay of Pigs invasion but carried the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later increased the number of U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam to more than 16,000.

[Madame Nhu was] the Sandra Dee of South Vietnam. If I were cast on a desert island with her, I would quickly make friends with the natives.

The leading, the most respected Vietnam historian, military historian Bernard Fall -he was a hawk incidentally, but he cared for the Vietnamese - he said it wasn't clear to him whether Vietnam could survive as a historical and cultural entity under the most massive attack that any region that size had ever suffered. He was talking about South Vietnam, incidentally.

We wait here to meet the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam to discuss together a ceremony of orderly transfer of power so as to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed in the population.

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.

I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam - the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers.

Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they are living side by side.

[John F. Kennedy] kept a diary and in the White House dictated his thoughts. He felt real guilt at the killing of [Ngo Dinh] Diem, the leader of South Vietnam.

As mayor, I've traveled to China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Mexico to meet with heads of state and business leaders to promote trade with L.A. companies and through L.A.'s seaports and airports - because that generates L.A. jobs.

Where I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it wasn't the south-east and it wasn't the deep south and it wasn't quite the south-west either.

The Marines in Korea never feared 'friendly fire' or artillery coming from the South Koreans - from their allies - like they did later in Vietnam, fighting with the South Vietnamese. The Koreans could be trusted.

Living with a nuclear North Korea could give its leaders the confidence to act more aggressively versus South Korea. It could also, over time, drive both South Korea and Japan, as well as countries farther afield such as Vietnam, to reconsider their non-nuclear postures. The stability of a critical region of the world would suddenly be in doubt.

I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam.

After the 1954 Geneva international conference, Vietnam was divided into two parts. On paper, North and South Vietnam were twin countries born at the same moment.

Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost, before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.

Why was the United States so afraid of an independent South Vietnam? Well, I think the reason again is pretty clear from the internal government documents. Precisely what they were afraid of was that the "takeover" of South Vietnam by nationalist forces would not be brutal. They feared it would be conciliatory and that there would be successful social and economic development - and that the whole region might work.

Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.

President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.

It was obvious uh, that uh, the situation in Vietnam was far from stable in 1964 and that there, if in fact the United States was going to uh carry out its declared intent to uh, do its best to prevent uh, a Communist overrun of South Vietnam, uh, there would be at least hard choices to make, and there might be a choice for uh, stronger action.

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.

O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!

South Vietnam faces total defeat, and soon.

From its inception, South Vietnam was only considered to be an outpost in the war against communism.

I greatly blame Congress, spurred on by its personal hatred of Nixon, for passing legislation in June through August of '73 which embargoed any further U.S. help to South Vietnam.

The politicians in Washington just had no idea about the complexity of the situation in South Vietnam.

We South Vietnamese, we are very concerned about the ah, the fact that the communists are - were very shrewd in trying to take advantage of the American presence in South Vietnam to make the propaganda that they were the only one who fought for the independence of the country and against the, only foreigners, first the French and after that the Americans.

My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.

With all my traveling around the world I would say that South Vietnam was not as corrupted as people want to talk about it because it is a matter of degrees.

If you're black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you south of the Canadian border, you're south.

I can remember as a young lieutenant being sent into the DMZ in the divided Vietnam, from North Vietnam.

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east.

I have dear friends in South Carolina, folks who made my life there wonderful and meaningful. Two of my children were born there. South Carolina's governor awarded me the highest award for the arts in the state. I was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. I have lived and worked among the folks in Sumter, South Carolina, for so many years. South Carolina has been home, and to be honest, it was easier for me to define myself as a South Carolinian than even as an American.

Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue.

During the day on Monday, Washington time, the airport at Saigon came under persistent rocket as well as artillery fire and was effectively closed. The military situation in the area deteriorated rapidly. I therefore ordered the evacuation of all American personnel remaining in South Vietnam.

There's just no question that the United States was trying desperately to prevent the independence of South Vietnam and to prevent a political settlement inside South Vietnam. And in fact it went to war precisely to prevent that. It finally bombed the North in 1965 with the purpose of trying to get the North to use its influence to call off the insurgency in the South.

The U.S. directed the war against South Vietnam. There was a political settlement in 1954. But in the late '50's the United States organized an internal repression in South Vietnam, not using its troops, but using the local apparatus it was constructing. This was a very significant and very effective campaign of violence and terrorism against the Vietminh - which was the communist-led nationalist force that fought the French. And the Vietminh at that time was adhering to the Geneva Accords, hoping that the political settlement would work out in South Vietnam.

Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

By the end of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?

I think that the war on drugs is domestic Vietnam. And didn't we learn from Vietnam that, at a certain point in the war, we should stop and rethink our strategy, ask ``Why are we here, what are we doing, what's succeeded, what's failed?'' And we ought to do that with the domestic Vietnam, which is the war on drugs.

When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.

In 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam, South Vietnam, chemical warfare to destroy crops and livestock. That went on for seven years. The level of poison - they used the most extreme carcinogen known: dioxin. And this went on for years.

I was in the Army in the 1960s. I didn't go to Vietnam. I went to Germany, where I drank beer. But I did have an empathy with the soldiers in Vietnam.

Those days [of the Vietnam War] you couldn't get on a bus going to the South without expecting a riot over something or the other. All of that has disappeared thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

Because the GIs were sent massively to South Vietnam, maybe it's a good idea to have a broadcast for them.

At the beginning of his administration, Reagan tried set the basis for American military intervention in El Salvador - which is about what Kennedy did when he came into office in regard to Vietnam. Well, when Kennedy tried it in Vietnam, it just worked like a dream. Virtually nobody opposed American bombing of South Vietnam in 1962. It was not an issue. But when Reagan began to talk of involving American forces in El Salvador there was a huge popular uproar. And he had to choose a much more indirect way of supporting the collection of gangsters in power there. He had to back off.

You think Vietnam was bad? Vietnam is nothing next to Kosovo.

Most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's - the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now.

From 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course that Kennedy and Johnson knew that if any political solution was permitted in the south, the National Liberation Front would effectively come to power, so strong was its political support in comparison with the political support of the so-called South Vietnamese government.

You could think about Vietnam and at some point in time about Nigeria. And then you head to South America: Argentina, Columbia, Peru. Probably not all of them will have an F1 race, but they are definitely considering events.

For over ten years, bombs rained down on every village and hamlet in South Vietnam, and no one budged. It took the coming of a Communist 'peace' to send hundreds of thousands of people out into the South China Sea, on anything that could float, or might float, to risk dehydration, piracy, drowning . . .

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.