Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Lyndon B. Johnson.
Famous Quotes By 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
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
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
We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors. — 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
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
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
It now seems to be quite a thing to pull down the mighty from their seats and roll them in the mire. This practice deserves pronounced condemnation. Hero worship is a tremendous force in uplifting and strengthening. Humanity, let us have our heroes. Let us continue to believe that some have been truly great. — 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
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity. — Lyndon B. Johnson
I am a compromiser and maneuverer. I try to get something. That's the way our system works. — 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
The future holds little hope for any government where the present holds no hope for the people. — 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
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
Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions without having yet obtained the victory as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others those attempts which he neglects himself. — 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
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
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
Many have no happier moments than those that they pass in solitude, abandoned to their own imagination, which sometimes puts sceptres in their hands or miters on their heads, shifts the scene of pleasure with endless variety, bids all the forms of beauty sparkle before them, and gluts them with every change of visionary luxury. — 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
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
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
In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change. — 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
I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order. — Lyndon B. Johnson
The purposeful many need not and will not bow to the willful few. — 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
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
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
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
I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I dont like to say this and wish I didnt have to add these words to make it clear but I willregardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age. — 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
Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. — Lyndon B. Johnson
That though they may refuse to grow wise, they must inevitably grow old; ... that the proper solaces of age are not music and compliments, but wisdom and devotion; that those who are so unwilling to quit the world will soon be driven from it; and that it is therefore in their interest to retire while there yet remain a few hours of nobler employments. — 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
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
For it was only after I could become President of this country that I could really see in all its hopeful and troubling implications just how much the hopes of our citizens and the security of our Nation and the real strength of our democracy depended upon the learning and the understanding of our people. — 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
Now we may have more preachers out there than we have drinkers. But a fellow told me a story one time about a man down in Kentuckywhere they make bourbon. And he said you can take a jigger or two jiggers and get by all right. But if you try to take the whole bottle why you have lost what you started with. So don't try to take it too quick. And don't try to do all of it at once. I don't do much promising. I tell what my goals are and then I try to wrap it up and put a blue ribbon on it and get it delivered. We say put the coonskin on the wall. — 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
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
We come to reason, not to dominate. We do not seek to have our way, but to find a common way. — Lyndon B. Johnson
What convinces is conviction. — 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
Boys, it is just like the Alamo. Somebody should have by God helped those Texans. I'm going to Vietnam. — Lyndon B. Johnson
Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath. — 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
Whoever won't fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there. — 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
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
We know that they cannot bear their share of the taxes to help pay for their education. And unless those children get a good education we know that they become dropouts and they become delinquents and they become taxeaters instead of taxpayers. We know that they will join the unemployed. That is why we put top priority on breaking the vicious cycle that today threatens the future of 5 million children in this great land of opportunity which we talk about so much. — 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
Most of all we need an education which will create an educated mind. This is a mind not simply a repository of information and skills, but a mind that is a source of creative skepticism, characterized by a willingness to challenge old assumptions and to be challenged, a spaciousness of outlook, and convictions that are deeply held, but which new facts and new experiences can always modify. — 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
I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day. — 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
Victory is no longer a truth. It is only a word to describe who is left alive in the ruins — Lyndon B. Johnson
Not merely a nation but a nation of nations. — 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
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
We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it
to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice. — 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
Every child must be encouraged to get as much education as he has the ability to take. We want this not only for his sake - but for the future of our nation's sake. Nothing matters more to the future of our country: not our military preparedness - for armed might is worthless if we lack the brainpower to build world peace; not our productive economy - for we cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government - for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant. — Lyndon B. Johnson
President Can't Swim. — 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 classroom - not the trench - is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore. — Lyndon B. Johnson
Today our problem is not making miracles, but managing them. — 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
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
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
There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves. — Lyndon B. Johnson
I believe that the country weekly acts as a form of social cement in holding the community together. — Lyndon B. Johnson
In the decline of life shame and grief are of short duration; whether it be that we bear easily what we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we less regard others; or, that we look with slight regard upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of death is about to put an end. — 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
It is not uncommon for those who at their first entrance into the world were distinguished for attainments or abilities, to disappoint the hopes which they had raised, and to end in neglect and obscurity that life which they began in honour. To the long catalogue of the inconveniences of old age, which moral and satirical writers have so copiously displayed, may be often added the loss of fame. — 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
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
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
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents. — 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
In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from the land. — Lyndon B. Johnson
Government is best which is closest to the people. Yet that belief is betrayed by those State and local officials who engage in denying the right of citizens to vote. Their actions serve
only to assure that their State governments and local governments shall be remote from the people, least representative of the people's will and least responsive to the people's wishes. — 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
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
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. 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
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
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
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
Let no one ever think for a moment that national debate means national division. — 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
I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years. — 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