Korean War Quotes

I took Beetle home thinking that after the Korean War was over, I would have to take him out of the Army. I thought, well, what am I going to do with him? ~ Mort Walker

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service. ~ Oliver North

The amphibious landing of U.S. Marines on September 1950 at Inchon, on the west coast of Korea, was one of the most audacious and spectacularly successful amphibious landings in all naval history. ~ Bernard Brodie

We had it drilled into us time and time again: 'If someone above you falls, grip tightly to the vertical rope and cradle that person in your arms until help can get to you.' ... If someone fell down on me I swear I would have bitten him on the ass and would keep on biting until he got off onhis own. ~ C.S. Crawford

The U.S. military was segregated 'til the Korean War, and the blacks in World War Two were totally segregated. ~ Clint Eastwood

When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that. ~ Ang Lee

With a book called 'Keeping Score,' I really did want to write a book about the Korean War, because I felt that it is the least understood war in the American cultural imagination. So I set out with the idea that Americans didn't know much about the Korean War and that I was going to try to fix a tiny bit of that. ~ Linda Sue Park

The Philippines was with the U.S. in the Second World War, in the Korean War, in the Vietnam War, and now in the war against terrorism. ~ Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Hold on to your hats, Korea is a land of surprises ~ Don Oberdorfer

The second factor helping to bring the dissociative disorders back into the mainstream was the Vietnam War. For sociological reasons originating outside psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that arose from it were not forgotten when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realization that real, severe trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by Vietnam. Once this principle was accepted, it as a short leap to the conclusion that severe childhood trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood. ~ Colin A. Ross

My Hellboy is modeled on my father in some ways: a guy who's been in the Korean War, and he's traveled, and he's done a lot of stuff, and he's kind of got a been there, done that attitude. He's also been in the world. Del Toro's change was to have Hellboy bottled up in a room and mooning over the girl he can't have. ~ Mike Mignola

A military situation at its worst can inspire fighting men to perform at their best. ~ Marguerite Higgins

The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people. ~ Paul Robeson

East Asia has prospered since the end of the Vietnam War, and Northeast Asia has prospered since the end of the Korean War in a way that seems unimaginable when you think of the history of the first half of the century. ~ William Kirby

Back then, I think, both sides were just very young. They needed to grow up enough to realize that thing get quite complicated in the business of living, that a lot of things require mutual understanding and compromise. I mean, when you get right down to it, all business for us men on earth is based on material things - so we've just got to work hard and share the fruits of our labors with one another. Only when that is done righteously can we render our faith honorably to God. Within a generation of adopting a school of thought in the name of New Learning, be it Christianity or socialism, we all became such ardent followers that we forgot the way of life we'd led for so long. (2007: 163) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist. ~ Pankaj Mishra

There is an old saying that goes 'Start by plucking a hair, end by killing a man'. It is also said, 'Two hands must meet to make a sound'. The atrocities that happened here weren't carried out by strangers - it was us, the people who'd once lived together harmoniously in the same village."
"They say it was the superstitious freaks who did it."
"No, it was Satan who did it."
"Come now, what sort of a ghost is that?"
Ryu Yosop replied, "It is the black thing that lives in the heart of every man. ~ Hwang Sok-yong

When he reached the last hole he saw, far to the west, a series of rockets bloom in the sky. He watched their green and yellow and red petals arch across the horizon, and fade into the gloom of the earth. It was very beautiful, but he recognized them for Chinese rockets. ~ Pat Frank

I got called back into the Navy during the Korean War. ~ Daniel J. Evans

The price of gold was fixed at $35 an ounce in 1934, but by the time the U.S. got through the Korean War, the Vietnam war, with all the associated secular inflation, the price level had gone up nearly three times. ~ Robert Mundell

I suppose the time is ripe for them now, for the people who were there. They're ready now, I think. So ... they appear before us as part of their redemption."
"But you and I, we weren't to blame, were we?"
Suddenly slamming his thick palm down on the table, Uncle Some shouted, "Show me one soul who wasn't to blame!" (2007: 162) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

The blazing sun beat down on the concrete of the museum's front yard- Reverend Ryu Yosop felt as if the heat were sucking up all the moisture in his brain and heart. What different colors he and his brother Yohan must have used as each of them painted their own picture of home, of the carnage. These people have constructed yet a different vision of their own, Yosop thought to himself, but it all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together. ~ Hwang Sok-yong

I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist. ~ Chang-rae Lee

I had a visceral connection to the period [of Korean War]. By visceral I suppose I mean emotional. But every fiction requires so much that is not that so I did a lot of other research and a lot of thinking, a lot of struggling there. ~ Chang-rae Lee

THIS DEATH sentence is not surprising. It had to be. There had to be a Rosenberg case because there had to be an intensification of the hysteria in America to make the Korean War acceptable to the American people. There had to be hysteria and a fear sent through America in order to get increased war budgets. And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for Contempt of Court, but we're gonna kill ya! ~ Julius Rosenberg

Hardly had I left when we ran into the Korean war, doubled what I had asked for and doubled it again. I had told him I would stay in Government, be honored to, but not with the Air Force. ~ Stuart Symington

They were at the wrong place at the wrong time naturally they became heroes ~ George Lucas

As a child growing up during the Korean War, I knew poverty. I studied by candlelight. ~ Ban Ki-moon

As it turns out, the atrocities we suffered were committed by none other than ourselves, and the inner sense of guilt and fear sparked by this incident helped form the roots of the frantic hatred that thrives to this day. (2007: 9) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

The people your brother killed - well, they all had souls. They weren't Satan. Ryu Yohan wasn't Satan, either. His faith was twisted, that's all. I know now. I know that God is innocent. (2007: 143) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

On the other hand, there are a number of cases where economic growth did not produce better governance, but where, to the contrary, it was good governance that was responsible for growth. Consider South Korea and Nigeria. In 1954, following the Korean War, South Korea's per capita GDP was lower than that of Nigeria, which was to win its independence from Britain in 1960. Over the following fifty years, Nigeria took in more than $300 billion in oil revenues, and yet its per capita income declined in the years between 1975 and 1995. In contrast, South Korea grew at rates ranging from 7 to 9 percent per year over this same period, to the point that it became the world's twelfth-largest economy by the time of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. The reason for this difference in performance is almost entirely attributable to the far superior government that presided over South Korea compared to Nigeria. ~ Francis Fukuyama

We left our home forty years ago. Despite the unhappy events we faced there, we left because our faith allowed it, because our belief in the Lord taught us that we would find a new place, a place to build a heaven on earth. War was waged in our home as we left. Many, many innocents dies. To live, people killed and were killed. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds his people of the promise made to their ancestors regarding the land of Canaan. He delivers the law, teaching them how to win a life of victory in the land of promise. They said, Jehovah, let all the enemies of the Lord face this same end. Do not pity them or offer them promises, only annihilate them all. And yet, Jesus taught love and peace. I say again - those left behind in our hometown had souls, just as we do. It is we who must repent first. (2007: 17) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

I'm sure the most favorite airplane in my career would still be the Sabre F86 cleft wing , which allowed me to be credited with 2 Russian-built Mig-15 destroyed during the Korean War. Where I was in 1953. ~ Buzz Aldrin

O'Dell's driver was a broad man with a Korean War crew cut, his hair the color of rolled steel. A hatchet nose split basalt eyes, and his lips were dry and thick: a Gila monster's. ~ John Sandford

I proudly served in the United States Army during the Korean War as an artillery operations specialist in the all-black 503rd Field Artillery Battalion in the Second Infantry Division. ~ Charles B. Rangel

I went home one night and told my dad that an older kid was picking on me. My Dad, a Korean War vet and a Chicago cop for 30 years, told me, 'You better pick up a brick and hit him in the head.' That's when I thought, 'Wow, I'm going to have to start dealing with things in a different way.' ~ Steve Wilkos

The Korean War has also show quite clearly that in a major conflict manpower is as important as horsepower. ~ Aly Khan

The older America, until the 1890s and in some respects until 1914, was wrapped in the security of continental isolation, village society, the Protestant denominations, and a flourishing industrial capitalism. But reluctantly, year by year, over several decades, it has been drawn into the twentieth century and forced to cope with its unpleasant realities: first the incursions of cosmopolitanism and skepticism, then the disappearance of American isolation and easy military security, the collapse of traditional capitalism and its supplementation by a centralized welfare state, finally the unrelenting costs and stringencies of the Second World War, the Korean War, and the cold war. As a consequence, the heartland of America, filled with people who are often fundamentalist in religion, nativist in prejudice, isolationist in foreign policy, and conservative in economics, has constantly rumbled with an underground revolt against all these tormenting manifestations of our modern predicament. ~ Richard Hofstadter

In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes - and nonessential programs have been cut - to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families. ~ Robert Hormats

I always feel I had a very lucky life. For example, I sure didn't want to go in the army: when I was drafted in the Korean War, I wanted to go as a photographer. But luckily, they put me in the infantry - luckily because the official photographer was photographing the medal awarding and all the official situations. ~ Harold Feinstein

I wanted to do what Marilyn Monroe did (during the Korean War), when she went and just set up a stage and did a concert for the troops all by herself. It's so amazing seeing that one woman just going somewhere, this beautiful sex kitten, who's basically a pinup, which is what I've always aspired to be. ~ Lindsay Lohan

They keep us so hungry that we can't do anything but worry about where our next meal is coming from. They keep us hungry for so long that we are grateful for whatever little food we get. ~ Sook Nyul Choi

Fear was the terrible secret of the battlefiled and could afflict the brave as well as the timid. Worse it was contagious, and could destroy a unit before a battle even began. Because of that, commanders were first and foremost in the fear suppression business. ~ David Halberstam

Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam. ~ Don DeLillo

His ears were attuned for the steady firing of Couzens' heavy machine guns, which he knew should now commence, and the thud of his carefully sited mortars, but he did not hear them and he realized, suddenly and sickeningly, that the Chinese had not attacked across the spit of land. They were pouring across the ice, and had taken Dog Company in the rear. ~ Pat Frank

I was with a special services unit in the Korean war, and when I got out, the biggest thing I got was a GI scholarship. ~ Chuck Feeney

South Korea first allowed women into the military in 1950 during the Korean War. Back then, female soldiers mainly held administrative and support positions. Women began to take on combat roles in the 1990s when the three military academies, exclusive to men, began accepting women. ~ Kim Young-ha

When I was six, the Korean War broke out, and all the classrooms were destroyed by war. We studied under the trees or in whatever buildings were left. ~ Ban Ki-moon

As a Korean War Veteran, I know too well the troubling nature of war. This is why I will always support a diplomatic answer before military intervention. ~ Charles B. Rangel

The need for a non-veteran reserve became painfully obvious in the Korean war when many of the men who were being called to serve were World War II veterans participating in Ready Reserve units. ~ J. Anthony Lukas

Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won. ~ Helen Thomas

I will defend Korea as I would my own country-just as I would California. ~ Douglas MacArthur

It is not widely known that, ever since the end of the Korean War, the United States has spent essentially the same amount of money on defense, in real terms, every single year. ~ James Fallows

It suddenly occurred to me that the whole notion of this side, of us and them - it was all over. It was no longer the Lord's Crusade. We were no longer fighting to overthrow Satan. We have been tested, I thought to myself, and we have been found wanting. Our faith was corrupted. My comrades and I - we'd become the endless days, days without light. What does that mean, you ask? We were sick and tired of living. At the least provocation, we would spit out, Fuck it, and kill whoever happened to be involved. (2007: 222) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

From now on, we're home schooling you. Whatever we don't know, you don't know. When did the Korean War start? I don't know, and neither do you! ~ George Lopez

You could buy individual boxes of detergent and fabric softener, even bleach, and there was nothing that made me grind my teeth with pleasure more than a real thing shrunken down small. The first time my dad showed me a toothache kit from a box of equipment from the Korean War and I saw the tiny cotton balls (the size of very small ball bearings), I nearly swooned. "Let me hold one of those," I said, almost mad at him. He gave it to me with a tiny pair of tweezers. I let it float in my palm a moment and then made him take it back. Miniaturization was a gift from God, no doubt about it, and there it was, right in a vending machine in the place we used to do our laundry. ~ Haven Kimmel

I was drafted during the Korean War. ~ Clint Eastwood

Laos is saddled with the distinction of one superlative: it is the most heavily bombed country on earth. During the nine-year secret war against the Communists, during the Vietnam War, the U. S. dropped 6,300,000 tons of bombs on Indochina, about 1/3 of which fell on Laos. It was the heaviest aerial bombardment in the history of warfare. During the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. rained more bombs on Laos than were dropped on Nazi Germany during World War II -- three times the tonnage dropped during the Korean War -- the equivalent of a plane load of bombs every 8 minutes around the clock for 9 years. ~ Sy Montgomery

I can't say a thing. What is there to say? I have given birth to a son! What more can I possibly hope for? I hear his footsteps crossing the front yard and gradually fading away, off into the distance. As the silence grows, I suddenly realize that hes gone. He's gone to someplace far away, and he's never coming back.(2007: 153) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

It comes down to this: we're pieces of equipment
To be counted and signed for.
On occasion some of us break down,
And those parts which can't be salvaged
Are replaced with other GI parts, that's all. ~ Rolando Hinojosa

People say to us, look, it may well be the case that there are fewer wars and fewer genocides, but surely more people are being killed. But when we look at this, the number of people killed in wars involving a state every year, all the wars, and you can see there's a high point, that's the Korean war, and it keeps on going down and down and down. If you look at the average number of people killed per conflict per year, it goes from 37-thousand in 1950 to just 600 in 2002. ~ Andrew Mack

I wrote Dreams of My Mothers because it reveals deep insight into a topic - cross boarder, cross racial adoption - that rarely gets much attention from any quarter, because it represents such a niche subset of our society, but contains within it nearly all the most deeply felt – and held – human themes, passions, values, insecurities, and judgments. And loves. ~ Joel L.A. Peterson

I am a Korean War veteran. I support our troops as much as anyone in this body, but I do so by advocating redeployment out of Iraq as soon as it can be safely done. ~ John Conyers

Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged. This is Liberty's work, and Down with Authority her war-cry. ~ Benjamin Tucker

I felt my throat tighten and constrict. My hearts ached with a pain I could not describe. I wondered if I were dying. I felt not sadness. I felt pity. For myself. For us all. We were children no longer. And we never would be again. ~ K.A. Applegate

When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it. If we really want to escape this war, we have to stop bringing it with us. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

The ghosts will eat everything because the bellies of ghosts want the whole world, just to fill one tiny corner. ~ Catherynne M Valente

War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

We can love religion as we need rituals, but The Holy Spirit is a bird, free to fly and land where it likes. We don't actually need 'religion' in order to have a relationship with The Holy Spirit. Too many wars an violence over religion.We need to see it's all the same spirit and we are part of that spirit so we shouldn't be fighting over what name we call it. It's a free bird. ~ Sinead O'Connor

Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work, waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause. ~ Adrienne Rich

It's cold enough to freeze the nuts off a brass monkey," Mikey said. The kids giggled. "Mikey said nuts," Nina said. Kate held up a hand, the sign for silence. "The saying comes from the Civil War days, when the cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they'd crack and break off. Breaking the nuts off the brass monkey. Get it? ~ Jill Shalvis

You might be a redneck if more than one living relative is named after a Southern Civil War general. ~ Jeff Foxworthy

War! It is purification, liberation, an enormous hope ... The victory of Germany will be a paradox, nay, a wonder: a victory of the soul over numbers ... The German soul is opposed to the pacifist ideal of civilization, for is not peace the element, of civil corruption? ~ Thomas Mann

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting. ~ Winston Churchill

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman. ~ Alfred Adler

If I had been prime minister, I would have offered apologies to the Dutch Jewish community without hesitation. This would refer both to our government's attitude during the Second World War and to the very late postwar discovery that the restitution process had been poorly conceived. ~ Els Borst

My greatest problem was stamps, envelopes, paper and wine, with the world on the edge of World War II. ~ Charles Bukowski

I know I have been portrayed as a general looking for war. Many other headlines speak of that. That's what people say. But I understand the importance of peace because I saw the horrors of war. That's how I see it. I lost my best friends in battles.. and I had to make decisions of life and death, of others and myself. ~ Ariel Sharon

The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war.. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

War creates peace like hate creates love. ~ David L. Wilson

That Shay was in possesion of hand grenades was a comforting thought showed what kind of night this had become. ~ Scott Westerfeld

Now, you should admit it: you are here engaged in some military action directed against the Yuuzhan Vong, knowing full well that any action you take could embroil the people of this peaceful world in your destructive war."
"Isn't destructive war kind of redundant? Until I see a constructive war, or even a giggly war, I have to think so."
Mudlath & Han ~ Aaron Allston

Some wars," he said dismissively. "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart is made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner. ~ John Green

If the military might of Germany and Japan are ultimately to be crushed, the United Nations, one and all, must definitely and urgently strive toward a total war effort. ~ William Lyon Mackenzie King

If this war has taught us anything, it is that convictions of righteous certitude can be soul-corrupting illusions that offer mo dispensation from hell. ~ C.S. Harris

Smoke veils the air like souls in drifting suspension, declining the war's insistence everyone move on. ~ Jayne Anne Phillips

I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy ... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. ~ George Porter

We were all survivors - every last one of us who limped our way out to the sidewalks that afternoon and spit in Death's cold face. ~ Cat Winters

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate ... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins. ~ Franz Kafka

So, I created these creatures called The Frightened Ones which in the film you see do have mask like kind of heads and they run beneath the ground to hide. Which is what in fact we did during the war. ~ Gerald Scarfe

Colin Powell made a number of mistakes in the run-up to the Iraq war, but his advice to his intelligence officers was psychologically astute: "Tell me what you know," he told his advisers. "Then tell me what you don't know, and only then can you tell me what you think. Always keep those three separated. ~ Jonah Lehrer

There was talk about a great victory in this war; it was so important that… That this war put an end to all wars.' Sheldon Skaggs snorted, spitting beer onto his beer. Zoltan Chivay roared with laughter. 'What do you think, gentlemen?'
Now it was Dennis Cranmer's turn to burst out laughing. Yarpen Zigrin retained his seriousness. He studied the young man attentively and seemed concerned.

'Son,' he said very seriously. 'Look. There, sitting at the counter is Evangelina Parr. She is admittedly, substantial. Indeed, even great. But despite her actions, not one whore can put an end to all whores. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

"Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow." ~ Dick Cheney