Andrew Johnson's Quotes & Sayings

Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects. — Andrew 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

Brady! You can't watch that!"
He looked up at me, his eyebrows furrowed, from his place on the floor. The remote was far away from him, next to the screen, so he couldn't have changed the channel. I snatched it up and hit the information button. "What the hell is a YoGabbaGabba?" I looked back over at Brady and frowned. "Uh, never mind. Go ahead."
Walking with purpose back into the kitchen, I whispered into the receiver. "Okay. No joke, there is a talking, dancing, bright red, studded dildo on the screen. There are other ones that look like him, and I swear to God one is wearing a condom on his head. That's a kids' show?" I looked back into the living room. "Whatever happened to good old-fashioned cartoons? Don't they have good shit like Animaniacs anymore? — Amber L. Johnson

My right side is paralyzed. I need no doctor. I can overcome my own troubles. — Andrew Johnson

It is our sacred duty to transmit unimpaired to our posterity the blessings of liberty which were bequeathed to us by the founders of the Republic. — Andrew Johnson

If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet. — Andrew Johnson

I feel incompetent to perform duties ... which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me. — Andrew Johnson

God being willing and whether traitors be few or many I intend to fight them to the end. — Andrew Johnson

I have performed my duty to my God, my country, and my family. I have nothing to fear in approaching death. To me it is the mere shadow of God's protecting wing ... Here I will rest in quiet and peace beyond the reach of calumny's poisoned shaft, the influence of envy and jealous enemies, where treason and traitors or State backsliders and hypocrites in church can have no peace. — Andrew Johnson

I realized, there are people out there who can beat me, want to beat me. And unless I continue to innovate and evolve, I am going to learn a painful lesson from someone who has. — Andrew Johnson

When I die, I desire no better winding sheet than the Stars and Stripes, and no softer pillow than the Constitution of my country. — Andrew Johnson

There are no good laws but such as repeal other laws. — Andrew Johnson

The goal to strive for is a poor government but a rich people. — Andrew Johnson

The homestead policy was established only after long and earnest resistance; experience proves its wisdom. The lands in the hands of industrious settlers, whose labor creates wealth and contributes to the public resources, are worth more to the United States than if they had been reserved as a solitude for future purchasers. — Andrew Johnson

Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigourously, more vigourously, and more severely, than by one. — Andrew Johnson

I have lived among negroes, all my life, and I am for this Government with slavery under the Constitution as it is. I am for the Government of my fathers with negroes. I am for it without negroes. Before I would see this Government destroyed I would send every negro back to Africa, disintegrated and blotted out of space — Andrew Johnson

I never thought I would be impeached. — Andrew Johnson

No man has a right to judge Andrew Johnson in any respect who has not suffered as much and done as much as he for the Nation's sake. — Abraham Lincoln

The look of impressed wonder made my inner teenager lock himself in the bathroom with a Playboy. — Amber L. Johnson

WTF? I am so tired I can't see straight. Kids have no bedtime in the summer? Screw that shit. I'll enforce it - if not for them, then for me. I want to pass out by eight now, which is uncool because the sun is still out. Can you give children melatonin? Or is Benadryl still the go-to? — Amber L. Johnson

Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor — Andrew Johnson

If you always support the correct principles then you will never get the wrong results! — Andrew Johnson

I am sworn to uphold the Constitution as Andy Johnson understands it and interprets it. — Andrew Johnson

If blacks were given the right to vote, that would place every splay-footed, bandy-shanked, hump-backed, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, woolly-headed, ebon-colored in the country upon an equality with the poor white man. — Andrew Johnson

Wednesday: Do none of these cartoon kids have parents? Max and Ruby - do they live alone? And why won't she EVER listen to what Max says? Damn goody-goody know-it-all. Reminds me of Cece. — Amber L. Johnson

I tell our sisters in the South that so far as Tennessee is concerned she will not be dragged into a Southern or any other confederacy until she has had time to consider; and then she will go when she believes it to be her interest, and not before. — Andrew Johnson

Honest conviction is my courage; the Constitution is my guide. — Andrew Johnson

Brady was staring at me from across the table. Unmoving. Unblinking. Not speaking. It was like an old Western. The house was too quiet as I stared back at him. He was winning this contest. And I'd had no idea we were even in one to begin with. Break, kid. Break — Amber L. Johnson

Legislation can neither be wise nor just which seeks the welfare of a single interest at the expense and to the injury of many and varied interests. — Andrew Johnson

The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens. — Andrew Johnson

For myself, I care not whether treason be committed North or South; he that is guilty of treason is entitled to a traitor's fate! — Andrew Johnson

Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribed for our motto: 'Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,' and exclaim, 'Christ first, our country next!' — Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson wasn't too bad, but he was overwhelmed by a hostile Congress. — Harry S. Truman

I hold it the duty of the executive to insist upon frugality in the expenditure, and a sparing economy is itself a great national source. — Andrew Johnson

Abraham Lincoln wasn't much of a dancer. "Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you in the worst way," he told his future wife. Miss Todd later said to a friend, "He certainly did."

"John Quincy Adams was a first-rate swimmer. Once when he was skinny-dipping in the Potomac River, a women reporter snatched his clothes and sat on them until he gave her an interview."

"(Andrew Johnson couldn't read until he was fourteen! He didn't learn to write until after he was married!) — Judith St. George

Hey, buddy. Are you ready to swim with Joshua? And eat hot dogs?"
Brady nodded. "Hot dogs! Thew's a pawty in my tummy!" He giggled and grinned at me.
I rolled my eyes and set him down on the floor. "You're going to make me sing it back?"
He nodded, bouncing.
I rubbed my hand over my stomach. "So yummy, so yummy."
He fell back onto his bottom and rolled on the floor in a fit of laughter.
"No more YoGabbaGabba, li'l man. It makes Dee's brain crazy. — Amber L. Johnson

If there was ever a president who could be called our Charlie Browniest, it would be Andrew Johnson. — Daniel O'Brien

The sovereignty of the States is the language of the Confederacy and not the language of the Constitution. The latter contains the emphatic words. This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding — Andrew Johnson

I couldn't believe it; my deepest darkest fantasy of a cute school girl slowly stripping in front of me was finally unbelievingly coming true! Furthermore, it wasn't just any school girl, but one from my school, that was the icing on the cake, or at least it should have been. Because, at the same time that my fantasy was becoming reality, I felt that I was being very badly cheated. Why couldn't it have been sixteen year old Heather Johnson or fifteen year old Pamela wade stripping before me, instead of the eight year old Ami Fujishiro? — Andrew James Pritchard

Notwithstanding a mendacious press; notwithstanding a subsidized gang of hirelings who have not ceased to traduce me, I have discharged all my official duties and fulfilled my pledges. And I say here tonight that if my predecessor had lived, the vials of wrath would have poured out upon him. — Andrew Johnson

If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary. This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union. — Andrew Johnson

I have reached the summit of my ambition. — Andrew Johnson

Duties have been mine; consequences are God's. — Andrew Johnson

For the Negro, Andrew Johnson did less than nothing when once he realized that the chief beneficiary of labor and economic reform in the South would be freedmen. His inability to picture Negroes as men made him oppose efforts to give them land; oppose national efforts to educate them; and above all things, oppose their rights to vote. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Washington, DC is 12 square miles bordered by reality. — Andrew Johnson

The enactment of the Homestead Act would create the strongest tie between the citizen and the Government-he would with cheerfulness contribute his proportionable part of the taxes to defray the expenses of the political system under which he lived. — Andrew Johnson

Huh? What did I promise?"
"Fowevew," he said with a nod, like it was final.
"Exactly."
We stared at each other, and it reminded me of my first day, when he stared me down like a mute gunslinger. — Amber L. Johnson

Let them impeach and be damned. — Andrew Johnson

Who, then, will govern? The answer must be, Man - for we have no angels in the shape of men, as yet, who are willing to take charge of our political affairs. — Andrew Johnson

A hastily written "Civil Rights Act" was rushed through Congress. President Andrew Johnson immediately vetoed it, noting that the right to confer citizenship rested with the several states, and that "the tendency of the bill is to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion". — Eustace Mullins

Wednesday: A thousand kids running around and trampling each other on the slides at Monkey Joe's. Afraid for Brady's safety and had to leave before I punched an eight-year-old in the face — Amber L. Johnson

BY THE END OF MY JUNIOR YEAR, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS WERE MAKING their way into the news. The first one I heard about was in 1997, when Luke Woodham killed two students and wounded seven others in Pearl, Mississippi. Two months later, in West Paducah, Kentucky, Michael Carneal killed three students at a high school prayer service. In March of 1998, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden of Jonesboro, Arkansas - one aged thirteen, the other eleven - set off a fire alarm to make their fellow students run outside, then opened fire from the trees. They killed four students and a teacher. Finally, Kip Kinkel went on a rampage in Springfield, Oregon in May of 1998. He murdered both of his parents at home, then went to school, killed two students, and wounded twenty-two others. — Brooks Brown

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country. — Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men. — Stephen Ambrose

I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson. — Stephen Ambrose

Slavery exists. It is black in the South, and white in the North. — Andrew Johnson