William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes

The same people that are with me for not going to Vietnam because I saved them and their children.The same people will give me hell if I turn to them and say, 'let's free my people now'.They're with me on one part of my beliefs about the war, that's all. Not for my freedom.

If we could, somehow, get a vote of the people of Tennessee and have it result properly, it would be worth more to us than a battle gained. How long before we can get such a vote?

I guess the Kennedys were just too busy having an affair with Marilyn to worry about Vietnam.

It's a very painful and difficult process of many mistakes when people receive the right to vote, to elect their leaders when they become the subject for mass media for political manipulation. In particular, in a country like Russia, because we had to go through this period very quickly, it has been, I would say, a crash course in democracy

Goldwater and his crowd tell me that they’ll forgive you for anything except being weak.

We don't have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. But I can't give up a piece of territory as big as South Vietnam and still have the people re-elect me.

Richard Dreyfuss, when we were doing 'American Graffiti,' was pumping me to vote for McGovern. But I think I wound up going for Nixon. I thought he could get us out of the Vietnam War quickly. Ha.

I used to be of the opinion that it didn't matter who you voted for. The world balanced itself out and kept on truckin'. Which is true, but politics are still important.

I didn't see conflict during the Vietnam War, but I did lose close friends.

Vote for the USDP because only the USDP can bring peace and tranquility to the country-only vote for the USDP, don't vote for the wrong people.

I intend to vote for President George W. Bush in the next election, because in my view, he is best able to wage the war against international terrorism.

Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.

We have an absolute right in a democracy to argue about a war.

From the days of the Founding Fathers, right to this (2008) election, how and where America fights to defend its freedom, has been the ultimate question in its politics. The one that triggers rage and sorrow; the one that asks is the price of blood too dear? Or, if it is to stay true to its convictions, does America have no coice but to put its lives on the line?

Have you ever had any anger about President Bush - who spent his time during the Vietnam War in the National Guard - running, in effect, a campaign that does its best to diminish your service in Vietnam? You have to be at least irritated by that, or have you been?

Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war.

By 1973, John Kerry had already accused American soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam, thrown someone else's medals to the ground in an anti-war demonstration, and married his first heiress.

A society is not 'free' merely because the freedoms the people are doing away with are those they voted at the last election to do without.

President Bush's campaign is now attacking John Kerry for throwing away some of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. Bush did not have any medals to throw away, but in his defense he did have all his services records thrown out.

Every country should be tired of going to war. War is a terrible thing. If I had been in Congress, as much as I would be inclined naturally to be supportive of a president, any president, I would have voted no, had the issue come to a vote.

I wish that George W. Bush had gone to Vietnam, because he would have seen history in a different light. He would've experienced it in a different light because I don't think he understood the nature of war.

The only important lesson from the Vietnam War is this: Democrats lose wars.

There is one hell of a difference between fighting in the ring and going to war in Vietnam.

I said to the president's wife, Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America. It is a war without explanation or reason.

I had lots of friends who were fighting in Vietnam and I am still friends with veterans of the war.