Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 127 |
| AUTHOR: | Curtis Emerson LeMay (1906–90) |
| QUOTATION: | My solution to the problem [of North Vietnam] would be to tell them frankly that they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power—not with ground forces. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | General In an interview two years after the publication of this book, General LeMay said, “I never said we should bomb them back to the Stone Age. I said we had the capability to do it. I want to save lives on both sides.”—The Washington Post, October 4, 1968, p. A8. |
| SUBJECTS: | Bombs and bombing |