There are two types of courage involved with what I did. When it comes to picking up a rifle, millions of people are capable of doing that, as we see in Iraq or Vietnam. But when it comes to risking their careers, or risking being invited to lunch by the establishment, it turns out that's remarkably rare.

We got to the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of a poor year for this country. We had Vietnam. We had civil unrest. We had the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But we went around the moon and saw the far side for the first time. A script writer couldn't have done a better job of raising people's hope.

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).

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 by Christmas.

The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about - or as a ritual like filling up a car - but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.

I wished I died in that attack with my cousin, with my south Vietnamese soldiers. I wish I died at that time so I won't suffer like that anymore... it was so hard for me to carry all that burden with that hatred, with that anger and bitterness.

My ultimate getaway is Vietnam. It has a little bit of everything when it comes to culture, amazing food, beautiful people, exotic sights, sounds and profound history of love, bravery and resilience.

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.

I wanted to have the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and Sydney and have the chance to work there.

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.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

I think Operation Smile is in more than 22 countries mostly Third World. It just happened that my schedule opened up at the time they were heading to Vietnam.

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

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.

In the seventies a group of American artists seized the means not of production but of reproduction. They tore apart visual culture at a time of no money no market and no one paying attention except other artists. Vietnam and Watergate had happened everything in America was being questioned.

It was definitely a part of our life. I mean my mom had both her brothers and her fiancee in Vietnam at the same time so it wasn't just my dad's story it was my mom's story too. And we definitely grew up listening to the stories.

He's a novice but he's had these - he's experienced in leadership in tight circumstances. He started - he dropped the first bomb led the first air strike into North Vietnam.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

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.

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 by Christmas.

The Vietnamese people deeply love independence freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up united as one man.

When I took command in Vietnam I gave great emphasis to food and medical care - and to the mail.

Nothing drew me to the film business. I was propelled by the fear and anxiety of Vietnam. I had been drafted into the Marines. My brother was already serving in Vietnam. I bought if you will a stay of execution - both literally and figuratively - and went on to graduate school of business from the law school that I was attending.