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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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"Just because they disagree, doesn't mean you ain't right."
"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."
"None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves."
"There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?"
"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."
"I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts."
"I get depressed with these fluffy dragons and noble elves. Elves were never noble. They were cruel bastards. And I dislike heroes. You can't trust the buggers. They always let you down. I don't believe in the natural nobility of kings, because a large percentage of them in our history have turned out to be power-crazed idiots. And I certainly don't believe in the wisdom of wizards. I've worked with their modern equivalents, and I know what I'm talking about."
"As uncomfortable as it might be, I refuse to let the comfort of being agreed with suffocate my opinions."
"He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still."
"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."
Explore more quotes by William Westmoreland
"I was participating in my own lynching, but the problem was I didn't know what I was being lynched for."
"Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
"I haven't yet figured out how I was made first captain, because I was not an outstanding student. I was an adequate student."
"Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there."
"President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone."
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