Lyndon Johnson Vietnam Quotes & Sayings

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. — Lyndon B. Johnson

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. — Lyndon B. Johnson

We still seek no wider war. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results. — Thomas Sowell

When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner. — Lyndon B. Johnson

A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as his war. — Glenn Greenwald

Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam were perfect for Lyndon Johnson: 220 million against 18 million, water buffalo and all. No risk, really. — David Douglas Duncan

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. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Johnson is not a comfortable model for President Obama to imitate. He is an all-but-forgotten president - pilloried for the failed war in Vietnam and criticized for grandiose reforms conservatives denounce as the epitome of federal social engineering that costs too much and does too little. — Robert Dallek

It's Kennedy's war, Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson got all the flak, but it's Kennedy's war. — Salman Rushdie

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

If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Johnson may have escalated the war, but when I was drafted and shipped off to Vietnam, the signature on my orders was Nixon's. — Bob Gunton

Boys, it is just like the Alamo. Somebody should have by God helped those Texans. I'm going to Vietnam. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation. — Lyndon B. Johnson

The U.S. invaded Vietnam because many in our government - Lyndon Johnson's best and brightest - imagined it could impose a government on that country that would provide a buffer against China and stop the supposedly rolling dominos of Communism. — Jay Parini

Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency. — Robert Caro

Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. After attending his first Cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara. "Well, Lyndon," Mister Sam answered, "you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once." It is my favorite story in the book, for it underlines the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal fluency which the team exuded, and the true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam. — David Halberstam

When downed American pilots were first taken prisoner in North Vietnam in 1964, U.S. policy became pretty much to ignore them - part and parcel of President Lyndon B. Johnson's determination to keep the costs of his increasingly futile military escalation in Southeast Asia from the public. — Rick Perlstein

Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it). — Rick Perlstein