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"As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion - and I worried about it."
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"Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support."
"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."
"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
"He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still."
"None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves."
"As long one is not able to let go of the insistence on a certain opinion [faith, sect], he has not earned the right for Moksha [Ultimate Liberation]. He is not worthy of Moksha if he is in the sect. He is only worthy of material happiness; he is worthy of a celestial life."
"One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed."
"Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self."
"The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter."
Explore more quotes by William Westmoreland
"The Vietnam memorial is a masterpiece. The names of the dead are listed there, chronologically. Just the names."
"By the end of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?"
"Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
"I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy."
"President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone."
"We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning."
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