United States Marines

"I was authorized to do everything that I did."

"War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults."

"One of the things that I learned in the war is that we're not the top species on the planet because we're nice. We are a very aggressive species; it is in us. People talk a lot about how well the military turns kids into killing machines, and I'll always argue that it's just finishing school. What we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit and rope in these aggressive tendencies, and we have to recognize them. I worry about a whole country that doesn't recognize them, because think of how many times we get ourselves into scrapes as a nation because we're always the 'good guys'. Sometimes, I think if we thought we weren't always the good guys, we might actually get into less wars."

"He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares.It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in so doing he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away. His killing that day would not have been evil if the dead soldiers hadn't been loved by mothers, sisters, friends, wives. Mellas understood that in destroying the fabric that linked those people, he had participated in evil, but this evil had hurt him as well. He also understood that his participation in evil, was a result of being human. Being human was the best he could do. Without man there would be no evil. But there was also no good, nothing moral built over the world of fact. Humans were responsible for it all. He laughed at the cosmic joke, but he felt heartsick."

"Combat is like crack cocaine. It's an enormous high, but it has enormous costs. Any sane person would never do crack. Combat is like that. You're scared, you're terrified, you're miserable, but then the fighting starts, and suddenly everything is at stake, your life, your friend's lives. It's almost transcendence because you're no longer a person. You lose that sense, you're just the platoon, and the platoon can't be beat. And not to mention there's a savage joy in overcoming your enemy, just a savage joy. And I think we make a big mistake if we say, 'oh war is hell'. We all know the 'war is hell' story—it is—but there's an enormously exhilarating part of it."

"Retreat Hell! We're just attacking in another direction."

"Keeshan made no secret of his distate for most TV shows … Keeshan argued that violent cartoons and the crime dramas that kids could easily see were no more reflective of reality than his beloved Treasure House."

"One of the big secrets of finding time is not to watch television."

"Let me introduce myself. My name is, uh, Kangaroo... Kangaroo — Captain Kangaroo … I'm the keeper here of the Treasure House."

"The children should never be excluded from what I am doing and should never have the feeling of being part of an audience."

"We have respect for our audience. … We operate on the conviction that it is composed of young children of potentially good taste, and that this taste should be developed."

"Children don't drop out of high school when they are 16, they do so in the first grade and wait 10 years to make it official."

"It is my contention that most people are not mugged every day, that most people in this world do not encounter violence every day. I think we prepare people for violence, and I think it just as important that we prepare people for the definition of being gentle. … for so many years gentle has been equated with weakness but it requires more strength to be gentle. So it's the every day encounters of life that I think we prepare children for and prepare them to be good to other people and to consider other people."

"Back in the old days, when I was a child, we sat around the family table at dinner time and exchanged our daily experiences.... It wasn't very organized, but everyone was recognized and all the news that had to be told was told by each family member. We listened to each other and the interest was not put on; it was real. … A child needs to be listened to and talked to at 3 and 4 and 5 years of age … Parents should not wait for the sophisticated conversation of a teenager."

"I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the armed forces are well served by saying through our policies that it's okay to be immoral in any way, not just with regards to homosexual acts."

"It is not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible but we have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran."

"For Guido Farinaro, USMC. These are yours — not mine! With love and respect, your platoon leader. Pete Pace."

"Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols?"

"Now I think you'll both agree that through my various illicit enterprises," Cairo Martyr said, "I control the Moslem Quarter in this city." "The mummy dust king is about to strike," muttered O'Sullivan Beare. But at the same time he knew the claim was true, just as was his own secret control over the Christian Quarter and Munk Szondi's over the Jewish Quarter, religious symbols and trading in futures being just as essential to Jerusalem as mummy dust. "Now then, that's my bet. Control of the Moslem Quarter. I'm putting the Moslem Quarter on the table. If either of you wins, which you won't, it belongs to you. But first you have to match my bet. No openers. The real thing."

"But to Stern at that moment it wasn't a hand grenade at all but a no longer distant cloud high above the Temple of the Moon, a driftin memory in the desert of dim pillars and fountains and waterways, mysterious places where myrrh grew, the ruins of his youth. Blinding light then in the mirror behind the bar, sudden death merging the stars and windstorms of his life with darkness in the failure of his seeking, bright blinding light in the night sky at last and Stern's once vast vision of a homeland for all the peoples of his heritage gone as if he had never lived, shattered as if he had never suffered, his futile devotion ended on a clear Cairo night during the uncertain campaigns of 1942 when the eternal disguise he wore to his last clandestine meeting, his face, was ripped way and thrown against a mirror in the half-light of an Arab bar, there to stare at a now immobile landscape fixed to witness his death forever."

"The Great Jerusalem Poker Game for secret control of the city, the ruin of so many adventurers in the period between the two world wars, continued for twelve years before it finally spent itself. During that time thousands of gamblers from around the world lost fortunes trying to win the Holy City, but in the end there were only three men at the table, the same three who had been there in the beginning."

"He's not a typical politician. He really has deep convictions."

"Our country is in the middle of a profound crisis. This crisis has many causes, but much of it has been brought about by poor leadership decisions at every level of government. In addition, our electoral process is dominated by financial interests that are threatened by the very notion of reform."

"Friends are found on the battlefield, and unfortunately friends are also lost. And where do we find the measure of that sacrifice? How can we account for the value of that loss? Sometimes we can find an answer in our sense of country, at other times in our Corps. But clearly we can see it in the lives that were able to continue due to the acts of others who were not so fortunate."

"I go anywhere in the world they tell me to go, any time they tell me to, to fight anybody they want me to fight. I move my family anywhere they tell me to move to, on a day's notice, and I live in whatever quarters they assign me. I work whenever they tell me to work... and I like it."

"George W. Bush: How's your boy? Webb: I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President Bush: That's not what I asked you. How's your boy? Webb: That's between me and my boy, Mr. President."

"I don't believe that right now this country needs a draft. I've proposed a 5% tax break for all people who serve honorably in the military. [...] If you go to the typical income of a veteran, it's about $30-something-thousand, so it's not a high-cost program. And it's targeted to people who've served. And one of the things that that would do is to bring more people from across class lines into the military."

"Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade. The Iraqis are a multi-ethnic people filled with competing factions who in many cases would view a U.S. occupation as infidels invading the cradle of Islam...In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets."

"The Navy Cross is presented to James H. Webb, Jr., First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as a Platoon Commander with Company D, First Battalion, Fifth Marines, First Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Force, in connection with combat operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. On 10 July 1969, while participating in a company-sized search and destroy operation deep in hostile territory, First Lieutenant Webb's platoon discovered a well-camouflaged bunker complex which appeared to be unoccupied. Deploying his men into defensive positions, First Lieutenant Webb was advancing to the first bunker when three enemy soldiers armed with hand grenades jumped out. Reacting instantly, he grabbed the closest man and, brandishing his .45 caliber pistol at the others, apprehended all three of the soldiers. Accompanied by one of his men, he then approached the second bunker and called for the enemy to surrender. When the hostile soldiers failed to answer him and threw a grenade which detonated dangerously close to him, First Lieutenant Webb detonated a claymore mine in the bunker aperture, accounting for two enemy casualties and disclosing the entrance to a tunnel. Despite the smoke and debris from the explosion and the possibility of enemy soldiers hiding in the tunnel, he then conducted a thorough search which yielded several items of equipment and numerous documents containing valuable intelligence data. Continuing the assault, he approached a third bunker and was preparing to fire into it when the enemy threw another grenade. Observing the grenade land dangerously close to his companion, First Lieutenant Webb simultaneously fired his weapon at the enemy, pushed the Marine away from the grenade, and shielded him from the explosion with his own body. Although sustaining painful fragmentation wounds from the explosion, he managed to throw a grenade into the aperture and completely destroy the remaining bunker. By his courage, aggressive leadership, and selfless devotion to duty, First Lieutenant Webb upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service."

"Ironically, the Pirates’ only run was driven in by Clemente when Marichal tried to quick-pitch him with the bases loaded in the fifth. With the count three and two, Clemente was standing in the box, but not looking at Marichal, who threw swiftly. “I was trying to smooth out the dirt around the plate,” Clemente said, “not looking, when I hear someone on the bench yell at me. I look up and see the ball, and I try to just punch at it with one hand.” He got just enough of it to drive it into the ground in front of the plate and bounce it so high that Orlando Cepeda had to wait helplessly for it to come down as the run scored and Clemente fled across the base. Clemente laughed in reminiscence. “I don’t remember anybody try to quick-pitch me since do it with Brooklyn. I punch it for double.""

"Roberto Clemente, a villainous Pirate from Puerto Rico, smashed a two-out, bases-loaded home run off rookie in the eighth inning last night to give Pittsburgh a 6-4 victory over San Francisco, and prevent the Giants from regaining third place after they had appeared a “cinch” with only four outs to go. Clemente’s slammer, the first hit by a Pirate this year, will be remembered long by the competing varsities. Going into the eighth, the Giants had what appeared to be a reasonably secure lead at 4-1, and was working on a four-hitter. But pinch-hitter {w|Dick Schofield}} doubled into the left field corner and Sanford, reaching back for just about everything he had left, struck out . When the now arm-weary Giant walked , manager came out and got him. Alvin signaled for LeMay. The first thing Dick did was hit Bob Skinner on the seat of the pants, and the bases were loaded, and 23,177 fans accepted this in mute silence that indicated they sensed impending disaster. LeMay got dangerous to pop out and had a two-two count on Clemente, the National League’s leading hitter, when it happened. Roberto smacked the next cast high and far into the black night, over the 410-foot sign in center-field. Willie Mays scratched his way up the screen in a vain attempt to grab the disappearing pellet that was a couple of feet too high."

"They say that if you don’t get to Veale early, you never will. The Giants almost did in the fourth and some say third base coach suffered from a flash of conservatism. Willie had singled into left and was wild-pitched to second. Hart struck out, looking. McCovey popped to second base. Two out. strung a line drive single into right field, a ball solidly hit. Fox stopped Mays after Willie had gone 15 feet down the third base line toward home. Willie went to his knees as he applied the brakes and had to scramble back on all fours to get back to the bag. Haller struck out. If Fox had opened the gates and let Mays go, and if Willie had made it, the Giants would have won in nine innings. But I think Clemente’s throw would have eaten him up."

"[Last night] the league-leading Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Giants, 1-0, in one of the most spectacular games of baseball ever played. Vinegar Bend Mizell, whom the Giants usually wrap up and mail back to the clubhouse by mid-game, scattered five hits but darn near destroyed his defense. He sent Roberto Clemente to the hospital, and had Virdon hung up on the left field wall twice, looking like wash on an ivy clothesline. In the sixth, Alou ripped a 420-footer that Virdon plucked from the ivy, and in the seventh, right fielder Clemente crashed into the wall to glove a Willie Mays rocket but to play no more this night. Clemente smashed face-on into the concrete base of the right-centerfield stands, at the 395-foot mark, and collapsed in the dirt warning track he had ignored in his pursuit of the certain double. It required five stitches to close a laceration on his chin and his left knee was sorely damaged. The catch had to rank with the greatest of all time, as well as one of the most frightening to watch and painful to make."

"I was at once shocked and satisfied when, in a game that August, he lined a drive back to the pitcher’s mound and broke the leg of the awesome Cardinal right-hander . (Through the rest of Gibson’s career, I felt toward him the solicitude we reserve for people whom we’ve injured without meaning to.) The game that has pleased me the most in my years of following baseball was one between the Pirates and Cincinnati, a game that the Reds won 8-7. Clemente batted in all seven Pittsburgh runs, going five-for-five, with a triple and two home runs. I thought that this effort was incredibly poignant in its doomed and solitary heroism."

"It wasn’t easy to do, but the Giants, inventive, imaginative and impotent when potential runs were straining at leashes all over windy Candlestick, yesterday crashed out 14 base hits and only scored one little old run as they bowed to Pittsburgh, 6-1. For seven innings, it was anybody’s ball game, on the strength of a two-out, three-run mighty mash into the left center field seats by Roberto Clemente in the first inning. In every round, from the first through the ninth, the Giants had runners on the paths, nine of them getting to second base or beyond only to drown with land in sight. Fifteen Giants were left stranded aboard the sinking ship. Maranda had two down when he ran into his first trouble. Bob Skinner singled, Rocky Nelson doubled and the powerful Clemente, who had homered over the right field fence Wednesday, cracked this one, his thirteenth, over and beyond the 420-mark."

"The Giants, up to the point where Haller decided it all, had their best shot when Schroder walked with one out in the fifth. With the Pirate infield tucked in rather closely, Cline rolled a single past at first base and Schroder was on his way to a certain death. He challenged the best arm in the National League, the rifle that hangs from the shoulder of Roberto Clemente, and Roberto threw out Schroder into the glove of Maury Wills. The throw was so low in its flight from bare hand to glove, Cline could not risk an advance to second. Mays followed with a single that would have scored Bob had he not given Clemente the challenge."

"What's this we hear about the Cubs, who detected a batting weakness of Willie Mays, also learning how to pitch to Roberto Clemente, the sensational outfielder of the Pirates? ... It is said that and Sam Jones, who played winter ball in Puerto Rico, not only got hep to Say Hey Willie, but it is more than a coincidence that Clemente has batted only .158 against the Cubs; in fact, he made only two hits in his last five games against them."

"One more thing for the record: Babe Ruth was far and away the best ballplayer I have ever seen. Closest to him for home run hitting alone, in my book anyway, were Jimmy Foxx, Johnny Mize, and Harmon Killebrew. Hank Aaron would rate in my top half-dozen, along with Joe Dimaggio, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Roberto Clemente."

"Clemente could field the ball in New York and throw out a guy in Pennsylvania."

"I say Roberto Clemente won that game for Pittsburgh. Simply by being Roberto Clemente and running out a ground ball the way he always has since the day he began playing ball 30 years ago. I had only one thought watching Clemente run down to first base. I wondered what Alex Johnson was thinking while watching the whole thing on TV."

"He happens to be nursing a troublesome left shoulder at the moment and this circumstance is sure to provoke some of his critics into saying there goes Clemente with another one of his imaginary ailments again. Clemente has no guilt complex or anything like that but he knows there are same people who are going to say that about him now because these same people have said the same thing before. They don't know his left shoulder hasn't been right since he ran into a wall in Florida chasing after a foul smash in a game against the Red Sox. Nine of 10 other outfielders wouldn't even try for it in a spring training contest. They also don't know Clemente took a cortisone shot in his shoulder Tuesday after rapping two hits against the Phillies, and that he has a huge lump atop his shoulder nearly the size of a baseball. But that's nothing new because there are some things most people don't even want to know."

"From a personal standpoint, I have known Clemente since he came up to the Pirates 17 years ago and the thing he did that impressed me most in the Series against the Orioles wasn't that he hit .414 or got off those excellent throws, but that he got up and chased the ball when he kicked it into distant left centerfield after falling down trying for a backhanded shoestringer on 's triple in the first game. "Swoboda would've had it!" said a newspaperman I know. Seriously, though, what impressed me so much about Clemente's get-up-and-go-after- it sequence is this was so typical of his performance. He'd do the same thing in the second game of a series with San Diego as he was doing now in the second game of a series with Baltimore."

"The strongest memories I have of that last summer in Columbus center on the passionate identification I developed with the Pirates’ great rightfielder, Roberto Clemente. Clemente was flirting with a .400 average through the first half of the 1967 season, and getting the kind of national attention that he always craved. I watched him on TV whenever I could, and he was the first performer from whom I derived a satisfaction I would call aesthetic. He was a compact, elegant, laconic presence on the diamond, spare and geometric, with a sprinter’s legs. His fielding and throwing were legendary – even then he was recognized as one of the very best ever at his position. Among his peers, only Willie Mays, from whom he had picked up the famous basket catch when the two of them played winter ball in 1954 for Puerto Rico’s Santurce club, possessed a comparable grace and aplomb in the field. He didn’t have the marvelous Mays liquidity – everything about Clemente was angular and emphatic – but as with Mays, his movements left you with the impression that he lived outside his body and commanded it effortlessly from a great distance. He was a bad-ball hitter – about as far as you could get, in the realms of greatness, from a student of the art like Ted Williams or a street-smart opportunist like – and a fierce, feral protector of the plate. With two strikes on him, he could foul off ball after ball, driving the pitcher crazy, until he got a pitch he could work with."

"The key play was one that might have been forgotten in the frenetic scrambling of runs. With men on second and third in the sixth and the score 5-5, Willie Mays smashed a searing low line drive into right field that seemed destined to leave the park. But the amazing Roberto Clemente leaped, glove above the railing, crashed into the wire fence and came down with the ball, as 6,028 fans first groaned in anger, then stood to applaud as fine and brave a catch as an outfielder can make."

"Roberto Clemente's intention to demand a $200,000 salary next season may be startling to the Pittsburgh Pirates' ownership, but in all candor they must admit one truth: of all the baseball athletes, Clemente is the closest to being worth $200,000 a year."

"The Pirates have managed to stay up there partly because of and sometimes despite Roberto Clemente, their best hitter and, when healthy, their best ball player. But Clemente does not play all the time. Some days he says he does not feel well, and he is known to have a back condition at this time. Actually, the Pirates have a slightly better winning percentage without their best athlete in the 51 games he has missed than they do when he has played. The old Orioles, those legends famed for playing hurt, may not have understood Clemente today. The Pirates never faced a more important doubleheader than the one with the Mets today. They lost the first game, and Clemente benched himself in the second. This could have been the choice of an ailing man, but the trouble is Clemente has asked out of second games of doubleheaders when he was healthy, and when the next day was an off day. If there is one chap who is holding the Pirates together it is their man, Manny Sanguillen, who refuses to be substituted for in the position that is most substituted, catcher. Sanguillen is the rugged Panamanian who wants to play every day, gives the Pirates one of the league's better catching jobs, and is a leader. He also hits .320."

"He soon perfected one technique that I’ve never seen another player do. A hard ground ball hit to the outfield on synthetic turf often gets through for extra bases. Roberto would run after the ball and, instead of trying to backhand it, and throw, Roberto would slide on his left side, his feet extended, just like he was sliding into a base. As soon as he’d intercepted the ball, he’d immediately pop back into a standing position and get rid of the ball. It was unbelievable! Oh, I’ve seen Roberto make so many plays I could talk about them forever. In old Forbes Field, the right-field line went down 300 feet and then angled out quickly. Billy White of the Cardinals once batted a ball over first base fair, it hit something, and skittered into the bullpen area behind the stands. White was already rounding second on his way to an easy triple. Roberto charged over from right field, slid into the gravel, grabbed the ball, kicked off the wall with his foot, and threw a perfect strike to third base. Roberto couldn’t even see third base when he threw – he was in behind the lower stands – but the ball zoomed over the pitcher’s mound and reached third on a fly. White was out by six or seven feet. Most remarkable throw I’ve ever seen him make."

"At , the fine new training headquarters of the Pittsburgh club, one may see [, among others,] Roberto Walker Clemente, a teammate of Willie Mays in the Puerto Rican League, who has copied Mays' method of catching the ball against his navel but, alackaday, not his batting."

"They seem to have a new star coming up in Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rican fielder. He had three singles, bunted in smart style, caught on with the fans, and was complimented by Macon at the end of the game. Which was an illustrious introduction for the colored boy."

"One more Puerto Rican, who happened to be the four-time National League batting champion, arrived in New York this weekend and today he left 41,323 Mets fans in anguish in Shea Stadium. Roberto Clemente also left the Mets to wonder if they had a future in the National League pennant race. Just before game time, Clemente reinstated himself in the Pittsburgh lineup after missing their last 11 games with a lame back and in the third inning he struck. He whacked a long and loud two-bagger off the left-center-field wall. That did it, for the Pirates, and to the Mets, in a 2-to-1 ball game. Both Pittsburgh runs were wrapped around Clemente's swat off Gary Gentry. It drove in Matty Alou, who was on second base after a single, and Clemente himself scored when Willie Stargell elected to get the 1,000th hit of his career in that spot, a single."