John Harsanyi Quotes

In January 1944 I was called up by the Forced Labor Service, but I deserted on October 10, 1944.

I succeeded in staying out of the military during the Vietnam War, and I would never assume the right to tell others to do a “duty” that I shirked.

As I was growing up, you know, I'm a white Jewish American born to Holocaust parents. My father fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and my mother's family had fled the czars of Russia before that.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

I think the thing that I most appreciate now is that stereotypes involving Jewish identity activate fears of persecution that exist in the present day.

Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

I don't have any respect at all for the scum-bags who went to Canada to avoid the draft or to avoid doing their fair share.

There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.

I want to warn anyone who sees the Peace Corps as an alternative to the draft that life may well be easier at Fort Dix or at apost in Germany than it will be with us.

The foreigners who have settled in Russia shall not be drafted against their will into the military or the civil service during their entire stay here.

There can be no army without men. Men can be had voluntarily or involuntarily. We have ceased to obtain them voluntarily: and to obtain them involuntarily, is the draft—the conscription.

Evading military service has a long history in American life.

The German mass murder of the Jews... brought my Jewishness to the surface.

When I was growing up, it was a bad time to be in the military. It was the time of Vietnam, but I was never called up.

We, in America and Great Britain, have never had to live with evil and ignore it, or pretend it wasn't happening, as people did all over Europe, and indeed, even in Germany herself.

Israel always has a special filter to look at things, and that is the attitude toward Jews.

We have a very significant number of Jewish citizens, and they have always been safe and secure where they are in Turkey.

Most people don't seem to know that I am Jewish.

Us Jews are nomadic people.

Majored in staying out of Vietnam.

One of the things I am most proud of is refusing to serve in the military when drafted during the Vietnam War.

Looking back now, I can see that my dad was a real fighter. A lot of people thought, 'Why don't you keep the Jewish stuff quiet?' They were anti-Semitic Jews. People who were afraid. People who came here and made it and anglicized themselves and didn't want to associate with their past.

I have probably become a lot more Zionist than I used to be. Jews have a history of being persecuted over a long, long period of time so I think it is absolutely right to have a country that is a Jewish state.

Because conscription appeals to essentially no one, the United States has lived with the All-Volunteer Force since the end of the Vietnam War.

I will always be a proud defender of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel.