I never staged a coup. They picked me up. Like I say, they forced me to become premier, maybe hoping that by that way, they send me to the electric chair.

Americans are big boys. You can talk them into almost anything. Just sit with them for half an hour over a bottle of whiskey and be a nice guy.

After the 1954 Geneva international conference, Vietnam was divided into two parts. On paper, North and South Vietnam were twin countries born at the same moment.

The way Americans understand and treat other peoples almost guarantees that the world will suffer more trouble.

I never staged a coup. They picked me up. Like I say, they forced me to become premier, maybe hoping that by that way, they send me to the electric chair.

And then when they picked me as premiere, I don't think I feel, you know, different. For me, the position mean responsibility, but that's all.

After Watergate, America was a ship without a rudder. Vietnam was left to its own devices, drifting along towards its fate.

By the mid-sixties, the United States had poured more than half a million troops into South Vietnam.

We all know that in war the political and military factors have to complement each other.

Through leadership of the fight against French colonialism, Ho Chi Minh had made a name for himself in the international political arena.

I have been blessed often by Buddha, but equally by America.

During the Fifties, political and military activities in Vietnam were heavily influenced by the French, who as recent colonial masters, made all-important decisions.

From its inception, South Vietnam was only considered to be an outpost in the war against communism.

By fighting a limited, defensive war, America permitted the enemy to endlessly re-supply their field armies.

If the war has faded into history, democracy's defeat in Vietnam has left deep marks in the consciousness of both nations.

If Americans knew how to deal with other people, they could bring peace to the world. Alas, they have not learned enough yet. The true American feels that he is 100 percent welcome anywhere he goes.

South Vietnam had to be built from scratch and, from the very beginning, depended far too much on the Western superpowers. As in the case of a person on public welfare, this dependency, which became greater with each day, was quite difficult to shake.

Success is sweet the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.

Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so.

Freedom. And Justice. If you have those two, it covers everything. You must stick to those principles and have the courage of your convictions.

I don't like Las Vegas. I'd rather be mountain biking or climbing.

Every person is endowed with God-given abilities, and we must cultivate every ounce of talent we have in order to maintain our pinnacle position in the world.

Really, what I'm doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.

I've made lots of mistakes. Probably the worst one - I would say they tie. It's either when I didn't move fast enough on something, or I didn't take a big enough risk.

My brother is worth a thousand of your friend.

I also have some Chinese weapons, but I like the Japanese sword the best.

I've had a very fortunate career and I've loved every moment of it.

I love doing sitcoms. I love doing comedy. I love the whole shooting match.

I just try to do what I have to do and let the people out there do what they have to do, which is have fun, scream, yell and jump around. I try to do what I have to do, which is play baseball, and I can only play in that piece of area there, so that's what I try to do.

If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race.

In 29 years, I had recorded over 2,200 songs. I was amazed.

China cannot pull in the best and brightest from all over the world. It's an ethnically defined nation, the opposite of an immigrant nation. You don't see a lot of American engineers trying to be Chinese citizens.

Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.

I attacked my cancer diagnosis the same way I attack training and competing, and that's pretty fearless.

The question I wanted to answer was, could I train my mind to be happy the same way one trains one's body?

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

I have resolved to pick one novel and just read it over and over again for the rest of my life, because I cannot remember anything anymore.

I've said it before but it's absolutely true: My mother gave me my drive but my father gave me my dreams. Thanks to him I could see a future.

I'm so tired of talking about Warren Buffett.

It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine.

If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment.