Lyndon B. Johnson quotes and sayings on ambition, challenges, character, civil rights, conflicts, democracy, constitution, equality, giving, liberty, security etc.
Founder / Co Founder:
National Endowment for the Arts, Office of Economic Opportunity, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th President of the United States. He was the predecessor of Republican leader Richard Nixon. Johnson accomplished an extraordinary feat of being one out of only four politicians ever to serve as President, Vice President, Senator and Representative. Before the New Deal era, many believe that Johnson’s tenure as president marked the zenith of modern liberalism of the United States. Johnson’s initiated several legislative reforms in the realms of civil rights, public broadcasting, aid to education, urban and rural development, the arts and public services. His ‘War on Poverty’ act helped millions of American to peeve a way across the poverty line which increased the standard of living in the country. As a statesman, Johnson expressed his views and thoughts on several issues ranging from politics to society. We have collected Lyndon B. Johnson’s quotes from his speeches, writings, articles, interviews and policies. Here are some of the most intriguing quotes from this domineering leader in the history of the United States.
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
[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
A man without a vote is a man without protection.
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.
Guns and bombs, rockets and warships, are all symbols of human failure.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The noblest search is the search for excellence
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.
The separation of church and state is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.
Lyndon B. Johnson
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
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
It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.
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.
I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.
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 believe the destiny of your generation - and your nation - is a rendezvous with excellence.
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
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
Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!
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
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
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
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
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.
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.
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.
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
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
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
The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
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
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
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.
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
Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.
Lyndon B. Johnson
It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I'm a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can't be too small to suit me.
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
Every President wants to do right.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.
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.
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
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
A man without a vote is man without protection.
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.
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.
Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.
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.
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
A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The 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
When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.
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
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
We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.
If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.
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
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.
