Quincy Jones Quotes

Well, look at what people are doing for returned veterans now. The wounded warriors. They're working hard to make the wounded veterans feel that they are loved and welcomed home, unlike Vietnam. It was not a very kind, gentle world then. I think we are kinder and gentler.

I was drafted into the Army when I was 19 and came out at age 22. Most people that I knew didn't think they'd come home alive. I didn't think I would either, so I was happy when I did.

I was only a gun captain on the battleship Alabama for 34 months. People have called me a hero for that, but I'll tell you this - heroes don't come home. Survivors come home.

Your generation and mine have had very little real experience; we've been severed from the direct experience of war by some very good things. By the end of the draft, and by the defeat in Vietnam.

When I first came back from Iraq, I of course found myself thinking a lot about it. Not just my experiences, but those of people I talked to, friends, and colleagues.

One of the things I took from my wartime experiences was that reality was a stage set... the comfortable day-to-day life, school, the home where one lives and all the rest of it... could be dismantled overnight.

We don't really see a lot of war movies about the people that are left behind, dealing with the deaths of those who serve and the sacrifices they make.

I put the Vietnam War behind me a long time ago, and what I wanted to (do) among other things was help veterans also be able to come all the way home as some of our veterans have not been able to do. But I harbor no anger nor rancor. I'm a better man for my experience, and I'm grateful for having the opportunity of serving.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for military families. To have to worry about your loved ones and still try and live a normal life is extremely hard.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

Most of all, our troops from Alabama said they appreciate the care packages from folks back home.

Some people just don't want to see change, but thankfully there are a lot of people more optimistic for something new in music, even with the bigger picture like with Obama getting elected.

England will be home for me. It always has been and always will be.

President Obama has made it his mission that we welcome our troops home with care and concern and the respect they deserve. That is how an exceptional nation says thank you to its most exceptional men and women.

The Great War was a progressive revelation and disillusionment.

We are Americans when we go to war, and when we return, we are Mexicans.

I think the language of sacrifice is particularly important for societies like the United States in which war remains our most determinative common experience, because states like the United States depend on the story of our wars for our ability to narrate our history as a unified story.

I went overseas hoping to prove that all our POWs were home. I came back convinced that they were still alive.

The notion that war forever separates veterans from the rest of mankind has been long embedded in our collective consciousness.

It came home to me indelibly that I was never going to change anything in America by walking around carrying a sign. It was a great revelation. It saved me a lot of anxiety and a lot of wasted energy.

Nothing seems to matter but ourselves. That's not how I was brought up. I don't recognize the country I live in anymore.

Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions.

Every American soldier wants as much public support as he can possibly have. That's the soldiers on duty in Iraq, and that's me, as well. We fight better knowing that our people back home support us, back us, and understand what we're doing. It's hugely important.

I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you, and you can't go home again. Since the spring of 1995, I have been quietly, even gamely, reassessing point number three.

When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn't lose a parent for good.