My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Maya Lin emphasizes that the personal experiences of veterans are more important than the political aspects of the Vietnam War.
Maya Lin's quote reflects her vision and intent behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. By choosing not to focus on the political debates surrounding the Vietnam War, she aimed to create a space that honors the profound sacrifices and experiences of the veterans themselves, separating their reality from the often contentious political narrative associated with the war. This perspective highlights the importance of recognizing the human stories behind historical events.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a speech at a Veterans Day ceremony to highlight the importance of honoring veterans beyond the political discussions.
More from Maya Lin
All quotes →I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.
Similar quotes
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim.
Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi.
Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery.
Worse still is that mankind - the non-Jewish world - learned nothing from the Holocaust: The event which had no precedent in history, which should be equal to the Revelation at Sinai in significance.
I think one of the great disasters (in military history) is the way that the Second World War has become the defining reference point for every crisis and every conflict.
The white men told lies for each other. They drove off a great many of our cattle. Some branded our young cattle so they could claim them.