Terry O'Quinn Quotes

I remember the day I found out my draft status. I was really floored and kind of staggered around in a daze. It just hadn't occurred to me that I could end up in Vietnam.

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.

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street…. They don’t go to school because they are going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.

Majored in staying out of Vietnam.

My brother-in-law, Chuck, whom I have known since we were teenagers, is a disabled veteran who was wounded while fighting with the marines in Vietnam. I've been around to observe how the war affected his life and the problems that veterans have, and I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a song about Vietnam.

We had the Vietnam War in the '60s, and there was a draft. The students didn't believe in it, and it unified them.

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

During the Vietnam era, more than 30,000 draft dodgers and deserters sought harbor in cities like Montreal and Toronto, where public opposition to the war was strong and most residents didn't question their motives.

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

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.

My father is American and deserted the Vietnam War.

No one should let the draft registration figures cause him to believe that the war is becoming popular ... They registered because the law makes it a crime not to register. ... Why should we permit our boys to be killed and maimed by the hundreds of thousands to protect the British commercial interest or because English profiteers make money out of this war?

[There are] some Nervous Nellies ... who will ... break ranks under the strain [of the Vietnam war]. And some will turn on their own leaders and their own country, and on our own fighting men.

Resistance to conscription [in WWI] was quite strong. By the end of the war, the ranks of noncooperators were stunningly large. Roughly 3 million eligible men never registered, in violation of the law — compared with the 24 million who did. And some 338,000 who did register either failed to obey an induction notice or deserted after they joined the ranks .... Altogether, a higher percentage of American men successfully resisted conscription during World War I than during the Vietnam War half a century later.

Evading military service has a long history in American life.

As the wife of a retired Navy commander and the representative of the district covering Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, I see firsthand the permanent effects of war - both physical and psychological - on those who serve our country.

I cannot support keeping our brave service men and women away from their families without a clear need or purpose that would actively benefit the people of Wisconsin or our nation.

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

One of the things that ties people together, whether they live in a rural or urban area, is the really big number of people who have served in the military. Veterans issues are very important in the district.

My parents are both war veterans; they met in Vietnam. They were involved in a war that they absolutely disagreed with.

Our family lives military and veterans issues in a way few others do.

I like automatic weapons. I fought for my right to use them in Vietnam.

As you know, several times, McCain talked about serving his country in Vietnam, which is a nice change after 16 years and two presidents who could never quite explain how they got out of serving their country in Vietnam.

I wouldn't choose conscientious objector and I wouldn't go to Canada. I did what Hap did and almost went to prison. I think the threw me a bone as the war was winding down, and I think they accepted my sincerity for being against that war.

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?