52 Lyndon Johnson Quotes

Lyndon Johnson quotes

1. And I just want to tell you this - we're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few.

2. ... making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.

3. 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. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have the right to vote...Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes... No law that we now have on the books...can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it... There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong-deadly wrong-to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

4. 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.

5. I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle.

6. We know that most people's intentions are good. We don't question their motives, we've never said they're unpatriotic. Although they say some pretty ugly things about us. And we believe very strongly on preserving the right to differ in this country, and the right to dissent, and if I have done a good job of anything since I've been president, it's to insure that there are plenty of dissenters.

7. It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

8. I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

9. Ford's economics are the worst thing that's happened to this country since pantyhose ruined finger-fucking.

10. Now listen, George, don't think about 1968. Think about 1988. You and me, we'll be dead and gone, then, George. [...] What do you want left after you, when you die? Do you want a great big marble monument that reads, 'George Wallace: He Built.' Or do you want a little piece of pine board lying across that harsh caliche soil that reads, 'George Wallace: He Hated.'

11. Don't spit in the soup. We've all got to eat.

12. Don't worry son. It's my prerogative.

13. Education is equipping our children to walk through doors of opportunity.

14. Fuck your parliament and your constitution.

15. Frank, are you trying to fuck me? [...] your boys just shat on the American flag.

16. I knew he wasn't an American.

17. I never trust a man till I have his pecker in my pocket.

18. I seldom think of politics more than 18 hours a day.

19. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.

20. If two men agree on everything, you can be sure one of them is doing the thinking.

21. If you have had your foot on the neck of a man for three hundred years, and then take it off, do you expect him to get up and thank you?

22. If you let a bully come into your garden one day, the next day he'll be up on your porch, and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed.

23. My generals are always right about other people's wars and wrong about our own.

24. We have just lost the South for a generation.

25. We learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite for aggression.

26. You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.

27. You're asking the leader of the Western world a chickenshit question like that?

28. You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

29. For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say 'Farewell.' Is a new world coming? We welcome it -- and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

1. A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.

2. Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.

3. Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject itself, or know where to find it.

4. We come to reason, not to dominate. We do not seek to have our way, but to find a common way.

5. 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.

6. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.

7. 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.

8. Republicans simply don't know how to manage the economy.

9. 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.

10. There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.

11. I'm the only president you've got.

12. I am afraid, ... that health begins, after seventy, and often long before, to have a meaning different from that which it had at thirty. But it is culpable to murmur at the established order of the creation, as it is vain to oppose it. He that lives, must grow old; and he that would rather grow old than die, has God to thank for the infirmities of old age.

13. The family is the corner stone of our society.

14. Never make a speech at a country dance or a football game.

15. 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 ... Most if not all of you have very deep ties with the land and with the people of Israel, as I do, for my Christian faith sprang from yours … the Bible stories are woven into my childhood memories as the gallant struggle of modern Jews to be free of persecution is also woven into our souls.

16. I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

17. Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact.

18. 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.

19. All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

20. In my state, on the basis of the separate but equal doctrine, we have made enormous strides over the years in the education of both races. Personally, I think it would have been sounder judgment to allow that progress to continue through the process of natural evolution. However, there is no point crying about spilt milk.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. If there is one word that describes our form of society in America, it may be the word-voluntary.