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The time has also come to identify and preserve free-flowing stretches of our great rivers before growth and development make the beauty of the unspoiled waterway a memory. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
When things haven't gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Scarcely any law of our Redeemer is more openly transgressed, or more industriously evaded, than that by which he commands his followers to forgive injuries. Samuel -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Already a congressman, to a mentor I hope sometime you run across something you think I can do well 24 hours per day. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Any man who's not willing to take half a loaf in a negotiation, well, that man never went to bed hungry. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'm gonna hunker down like a jack rabbit in a dust storm -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor? -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Law is the great civilizing machinery. It liberates the desire to build and subdues the desire to destroy. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Second, this law has become a special symbol of our Nation's most important purpose: to fulfill the individual - his freedom, his happiness, his promise. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We are now embarked on another venture to put the American dream to work in meeting the new demands of a new day. Once again we must start where men would improve their society have always known they must begin - with an educational system restudied, reinforced, and revitalized. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met - obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We can and should have an abundance of trails for walking, cycling, and horseback riding, in and close to our cities. In the backcountry we need to copy the great Appalachian Trail in all parts of America. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years. [Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan] -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There is no excuse-and we should call a spade a spade-for chemical companies and oil refineries using our major rivers as pipelines for toxic waste. There is no excuse for communities to use other people's rivers as a dump for their raw sewage. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If one little old general in shirt sleeves can take Saigon, think about 200 million Chinese comin' down those trails. No sir, I don't want to fight them. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
History may well record that we served liberty and saved freedom when we undertook a crash program in the field of education ... I hope this bill is only the forerunner of better things to come. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn't fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn't fair. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There is nothing that exasperates people more than a display of superior ability or brilliance in conversation. They seem pleased at the time, but their envy makes them curse the conversationalist in their heart. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
How incredible it is that in this fragile existence we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
"All men are created equal." "Government by consent of the governed." "Give me liberty or give me death." And those are not just clever words, and those are not just empty theories. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I report to you that our country is challenged at home and abroad: that it is our will that is being tried and not our strength; our sense of purpose and not our ability to achieve a better America. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
[T]he vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The best way to begin disarming is to begin-and the United States is ready to conclude firm agreements in these areas and to consider any other reasonable proposal. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't walk and chew gum at the same time ... He's a nice fellow, but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It will help at every state along the road to learning. For the pre-school years we will help needy children become aware of the excitement of learning. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A President must call on many persons
some to man the ramparts and to watch the far away, distant posts; others to lead us in science, medicine, education and social progress here at home. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Today - wealthier, more powerful and more able than ever before in our history - our Nation can declare another essential freedom. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children. Through compassion for the plight of one individual, government fulfills its purpose as the servant of all the people. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I am making a collection of the things my opponents have found me to be and, when this election is over, I am going to open a museum and put them on display. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The American West is just arriving at the threshold of its greatness and growth. Where the West of yesterday is glamorized in our fiction, the future of the American West now is both fabulous and factual. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Nothing so challenges the American spirit as tackling the biggest job on earth ... Americans are stimulated by the big job; the Panama Canal, Boulder Dam, Grand Coulee, Lower Colorado River developments, the tallest building in the world, the mightiest battleship. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
He's [Nixon] like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards. You'll see; he'll do something wrong in the end. He always does. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I won't have you electioneering on my doorstep. Every time you get in trouble in Parliament you run over here with your shirttail hanging out. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The classroom - not the trench - is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past
to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority's whims and the minority's rights. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I hear the headlines on the radio, see them on TV and read them in the paper. When I hear from the men out there, I sometimes don't believe they are talking about the same situation. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
[The United States and Israel] share many common objectives ... chief of which is the building of a better world in which every nation can develop its resources and develop them in freedom and peace. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Come now. let us reason together. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I will not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
New laboratories and centers will help our schools lift their standards of excellence and explore new methods of teaching. These centers will provide special training for those who need and deserve special treatment. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There are two kinds of speeches: the Mother Hubbard speech, which, like the garment, covers everything but touches nothing, and the French bathing suit speech, which covers only the essential points. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You have your own difficulties. We watch, with friendly confidence in your capacity to merge differences in the grand dream of Canadian design. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
He that in the latter part of his life too strictly inquires what he has done, can very seldom receive from his own heart such an account as will give him satisfaction. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office - and by personal conviction - I am sworn to uphold that tradition. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all the time. But Republicans haven't given up trying. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says in Latin: "God has favored our undertaking." God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The great society is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goods than with the quantity of their goods. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
People do not come out to vote for a United States Senator. They come out to vote for the Sheriff or the County Commissioner. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations -- Lyndon B. Johnson
My most fervent prayer is to be a President who can make it possible for every boy in this land to grow to manhood by loving his country
instead of dying for it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The American Indian, once proud and free, is torn now between White and tribal values; between the politics and language of the White man and his own historic culture. His problems, sharpened by years of defeat and exploitation, neglect and inadequate effort, will take many years to overcome. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In addition to our existing programs, I will recommend a new program for schools and students with a first-year authorization of $1,500 million. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Liberty is not enough. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In modern warfare there are no victors; there are only survivors. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid! -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, 'His color is not mine,' or 'His beliefs are strange and different,' in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this nation. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Of those to whom much is given, much is asked. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A good president does with executive power what Pablo Picasso did with paint. He takes bills into new and slightly discomfiting territory. He puts extra eyes on policies. He moves the mouth of the Supreme Court from where it should be to where it must be. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass. [Said to Senator John Stennis (D-MS) during debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1957] -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Son, when I appoint a nigger to the bench, I want everybody to know he's a nigger. [Said to an aide in 1965 regarding the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as associate justice of the Supreme Court] -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
For the first time in our history it is possible to conquer poverty. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You ain't learnin' nothin' when you're talkin'. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We have always believed that our people can stand on no higher ground than the school ground, or can enter any more hopeful room than the classroom. We blend time and faith and knowledge in our schools - not only to create educated citizens, but also to shape the destiny of this great Republic. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The purposeful many need not and will not bow to the willful few. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Control of space means control of the world. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Conservation is ethically sound. It is rooted in our love of the land, our respect for the rights of others, our devotion to the rule of law. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Never make a speech at a country dance or a football game. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It (the heart) is supposed in popular language, to be the seat sometimes, of courage, sometimes of affection, sometimes of honesty, or baseness. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We don't propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Once we considered education a public expense; we know now that it is a public investment. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Freedom is not enough. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Heck by the time a man scratches his behind, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we've already wasted fifteen minutes. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You never want to give a man a present when he's feeling good. You want to do it when he's down. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It is happily and kindly provided that in every life there are certain pauses, and interruptions, which force consideration upon the careless, and seriousness upon the light, points of time where one course of action ends and another begins. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
But, most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
All of us realize that war requires action. What is sometimes harder for us to realize is that peace and neutrality also require action. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Reporters are like puppets. They simply respond to the pull of the most powerful strings. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Effective law enforcement and social justice must be pursued together, as the foundation of our efforts against crime. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling rejected by the American people. I'm tired of waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the war. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We decided that our first job was to help the schools serving the children from the very lowest income groups. Those families constitute the number one burden, the number one burden in this Nation on the school systems. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A nation that fails to plan intelligently for the development and protection of its precious waters will be condemned to wither because of its shortsightedness. The hard lessons of history are clear, written on the deserted sands and ruins of once proud civilizations. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You've got to just stand there and take it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If you let a bully come in your front yard, he'll be on your porch the next day and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Boys, it is just like the Alamo. Somebody should have by God helped those Texans. I'm going to Vietnam. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
For the college years we will provide scholarships to high school students of the greatest promise and greatest need and guarantee low-interest loans to students continuing their college studies. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Light at the end of the tunnel? We don't even have a tunnel; we don't even know where the tunnel is. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Hug your friends tight, but your enemies tighter ? hug ?em so tight they can?t wiggle. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I am a compromiser and maneuverer. I try to get something. That's the way our system works. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I may not worry as much as Prime Minister Eshkol does about Israel, but I worry as deeply. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Don't Spit in the Soup, We All Gotta Eat -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The job, of course, will never be finished. For a nation, as for an individual, education is a perpetually unfinished journey, a continuing process of discovery. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe that the country weekly acts as a form of social cement in holding the community together. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Free speech, free press, free religion, the right of free assembly, yes, the right of petition ... well, they are still radical ideas. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe, with abiding conviction, that this people-nurtured by their deep faith, tutored by their hard lessons, moved by their high aspirations-have the will to meet the trials that these times impose. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Let no one ever think for a moment that national debate means national division. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences, that no one can perceive, nor will we bluster or bully or flaunt our power, but we will not surrender and we will not retreat, for
behind our American pledge lies the determination and resources, I believe, of all of the American nation. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There's something special for everyone to do. Remember, no experience is a bad experience unless you gain nothing from it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
For the primary and secondary school years, we will aid public schools serving low-income families and assist students in both public and private schools. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There's America, there's the South, and then there's Mississippi. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A perpetual conflict with natural desires seems to be the lot of our present state. In youth we require something of the tardiness and frigidity of age; and in age we must labour to recall the fire and impetuosity of youth; in youth we must learn to respect, and in age to enjoy. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We of the United States consider ourselves blessed. We have much to give thanks for. But the gift of providence we cherish most is that we were given as our neighbors on this wonderful continent the people and the nation of Canada. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We Americans know - although others appear to forget - the risk of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
That bitch of a war killed the lady I really loved
the Great Society. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If we fail now, then we will have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith; freedom asks more than it gives; and the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every man of any education would rather be called a rascal, than accused of deficiency in the graces. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If you have a mother-in-law with only one eye and she has it in the center of her forehead, don't keep her in the living room. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In the Great Society, work shall be an outlet for mans interests and desires. Each individual shall have full opportunity to use his capacities in employment which satisfies personally and contributes generally to the quality of the Nations life. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don't think anybody has held this job who hasn't felt personally responsible for those being killed. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The Roman Empire controlled the world because it could build roads ... the British Empire was dominant because it had ships. In the air age we were powerful because we had airplaines. Now the Communists have established a foothold in outer space. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Extremism is the pursuit of the presidency is an unpardonable vice. Moderation in the affairs of the nation is the highest virtue. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend together into the depths of war and desolation. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The moon and other celestial bodies should be free for exploration and use by all countries. No country should be permitted to advance a claim of sovereignty. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We need to remember that the separation of church and state must never mean the separation of religious values from the lives of public servants ... If we who serve free men today are to differ from the tyrants of this age, we must balance the powers in our hands with God in our hearts. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
No national sovereignty rules in outer space. Those who venture there go as envoys of the entire human race. Their quest, therefore, must be for all mankind, and what they find should belong to all mankind. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The test before us as a people is not whether our commitments match our will and our courage; but whether we have the will and courage to match our commitments. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'm willin' for any solution - religious, political. I'm not going to keep offerin' to negotiate so much because they turn us down each time. It indicates a weakness on our part. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Curtis Le May wants to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong. You know how he likes to go around bombing. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep, I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can ... Have I done enough? -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Emancipation was a proclamation, but not a fact. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'm going to have to bring up the nigger bill again. [Said to a southern U.S. Senator upon the occasion of the Republicans re-introducing the Civil Right Act of 1957, according to LBJ's Special Counsel Harry McPherson.] -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every citizen, regardless of his race, creed, or color, is entitled to equal justice. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A man without a vote is man without protection. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The experts spent a great deal of time and study working out a formula which would be fair to every State and fair to every county and fair to every child, and would put the education dollar where that dollar is needed most, now. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A man without a vote is a man without protection. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Republicans simply don't know how to manage the economy. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million - more than one-quarter of all America - have not even finished high school. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I don't have any handicap. I am all handicap. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems - the answer for all the problems of the world - come to a single word. That word is "education." -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It's the price of leadership to do the thing you believe has to be done at the time it must be done. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
As we maintain the vigil of peace, we must remember that justice is a vigil, too-a vigil we must keep in our own streets and schools and among the lives of all our people-so that those
who died here on their native soil shall not have died in vain. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
All that Hubert needs over there is a gal to answer the phone and a pencil with an eraser on it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We believe, that is, you and I, that education is not an expense. We believe it is an investment. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every gift contains a danger. Whatever gift we have we are compelled to express. And if the expression of that gift is blocked, distorted, or merely allowed to languish, then the gift turns against us, and we suffer. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Americans have always built for the future. That is why we established land grant colleges and passed the Homestead Act to open our Western lands more than 100 years ago. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The Secretary of Labor is in charge of finding you a job, the Secretary of the Treasury is in charge of taking half the money you make away from you, and the Attorney General is in charge of suing you for the other half. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Victory is no longer a truth. It is only a word to describe who is left alive in the ruins -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You know when you're milking a cow and you have all that foamy white milk in the bucket and you're just about through, when all of a sudden the cow switches her tail through a pile of manure and slaps it into that foamy white milk. That's Bill Fulbright. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Education will not cure all the problems of society, but without it no cure for any problem is possible. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You've got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you've got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A few years make such havoc in human generations that we soon see ourselves deprived of those with whom we entered the world, and whom the participation of pleasures or fatigues had endeared to our remembrance. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We will not have served the water needs of Americans if we meet only the requirements of today's population. A prudent nation must look ahead and plan for tomorrow. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You know there is no one in the world I would rather sleep with than Yuki. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I want every family in America to have a carpet on the floor and a picture on the wall. After bread, you've got to have a picture on the wall. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The poor suffer twice at the rioter's hands. First, his destructive fury scars their neighborhood; second, the atmosphere of accommodation and consent is changed to one of hostility and resentment. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
America has not always been kind to its artists and scholars. Somehow the scientists always seem to get the penthouse while the arts and humanities get the basement. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Where legitimate opportunities are closed, illegitimate opportunities are seized. Whatever opens opportunity and hope will help to prevent crime and foster responsibility. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
So, I would appeal to my fellow Americans by saying, the only real road to progress for free people is through the process of law and that is the road that America will travel. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In the years since then, those four freedoms - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear - have stood as a summary of our aspirations for the American Republic and for the world. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Our understanding of how to live with one another is still far behind our knowledge of how to destroy one another. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It means an educational system which does not simply equip the students to adjust to society, but which enables the student to challenge and to modify, and at times reject, if necessary, the received wisdom of his elders. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources
because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every President wants to do right. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
President Can't Swim. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read President Can't Swim. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
What we won when all of our people united must not be lost in suspicion and distrust and selfishness and politics. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as president. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Whoever won't fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'm the only president you've got. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I don't believe I'll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn't go to Harvard. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We come to reason, not to dominate. We do not seek to have our way, but to find a common way. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war; we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If we stand passively by while the centre of each city becomes a hive of depravation, crime and hopelessness ... if we become two people, the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear for the other ... then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
True poverty does not come from God. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you're advancing. If you don't you're as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn't there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Not merely a nation but a nation of nations. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We must change to master change. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize Oh man ... I could be eating a slow learner. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from the land. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe the destiny of your generation - and your nation - is a rendezvous with excellence. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The noblest search is the search for excellence -- Lyndon B. Johnson
For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own. [ ... ] Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged
character of our people, and on their faith. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Today our problem is not making miracles, but managing them. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If there is one word that describes our form of society in America, it may be the word-voluntary. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Peace does not come just because we wish for it. Peace must be fought for. It must be built stone by stone. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
[E]very man, everywhere, should be free to develop his talents to their full potential - unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Mr. Speaker, at a time when the nation is again confronted with necessity for calling its young men into service in the interestsof National Security, I cannot see the wisdom of denying our young women the opportunity to serve their country. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The family is the corner stone of our society. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The Organization of American States couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
When a person finds themselves predisposed to complaining about how little they are regarded by others, let them reflect how little they have contributed to the happiness of others. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'm a powerful S.O.B., you know that? -- Lyndon B. Johnson
For the individual, education is the path to achievement and fulfillment; for the nation, it is a path to a society that is not only free but civilized; and for the world, it is the path to peace - for it is education that places reason over force. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman-and each nation-must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
So here is the Great Society. It's the time - and it's going to be soon - when nobody in this country is poor. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The Air Force comes in every morning and says, 'Bomb, bomb, bomb' ... And then the State Department comes in and says, 'Not now, or not there, or too much, or not at all.' -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Our partnership has been built on four pillars The first pillar is peace. The second pillar is freedom. The third pillar is respect. The fourth pillar is cooperation. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Throughout my entire public career I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant, and a member of my party, in that order always and only. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I am proud to be a member of a party that opens its doors to all men
and closes its hearts to none. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The American people have a right to air that they and their children can breathe without fear. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It is the excitement of becoming - always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again- but always trying and always gaining -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The future holds little hope for any government where the present holds no hope for the people. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he's going to get sick on it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I am persuaded that the people of the world have no grievances, one against the other. The hopes and desires of a man who tills the soil are about the same whether he lives on the banks of the Colorado or on the banks of the Danube. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
This is not Johnson's war. This is America's war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The final conquest of poverty is within our grasp. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The best fertilizer for a piece of land is the footprints of its owner. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have
to ensure that right. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
John ain't been worth a damn since he started wearing $300 suits. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The debris of civilization litters the landscapes and spoils the beaches. Conservation's concerns now is not only for man's enjoyment-but for man's survival. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
And Americans have always stood ready to pay the cost in energy and treasure which are needed to make those goals a reality. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I wake up 5 a.m. some mornings and hear the planes coming in at National Airport and I think they are bombing me. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Of course, I may go into a strange bedroom every now and then that I don't want you to write about, but otherwise you can write everything. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don't think the press has understood me. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
He wouldn't know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If the American people don't love me, their descendants will. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We cannot have government for all the people until we first make certain it is government of and by all the people. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We still seek no wider war. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In 1790, the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren't much happier about taxation with representation. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
This nation, this generation, in this hour has man's first chance to build a Great Society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There can no longer be anyone too poor to vote. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I'd rather give my life than be afraid to give it. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Success only feeds the appetite of aggression. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
He's [Gerald Ford] a nice guy but he played too much football with his helmet off. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Ambition is an uncomfortable companion many times. He creates a discontent with present surroundings and achievements; he is never satisfied but always pressing forward to better things in the future. Restless, energetic, purposeful, it is ambition that makes of the creature a real man. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
No nation in the world has had greater fortune than mine in sharing a continent with the people and the nation of Canada. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
What convinces is conviction. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
No one has the right to use America's rivers and America's Waterways, that belong to all the people. as a sewer. The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all the people. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
A clear stream, a long horizon, a forest wilderness and open sky - these are man's most ancient possessions. In a modern society, they are his most priceless. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Of all the problems of conservation, none is more urgent that the polluted air which endangers the American people. We have been fortunate so far. But we have seen that when winds fail to blow, the concentrations of poisonous clouds over our cities can become perilous. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The thing I would like to do most is to find somehow to bring peace to the world. It has eluded me. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Guns and bombs, rockets and warships, are all symbols of human failure. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Voting is the first duty of democracy. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
If you're not listening, you're not learning. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
In our home there was always prayer - aloud, proud and unapologetic. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance, but agony. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Doing the right thing is not the problem. Knowing what the right thing is, that's the challenge. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I cannot say and no man could say that no more will be asked of us. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
You aren't learning anything when you're talking. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
I know - from personal experience - that abiding values and abundant visions are learned in the homes of our people. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Nothing comes free. Nothing. Not even good, especially not good. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
He's got great vision. If he can get outside, he can take it all the way. That's what we were worried about. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
