Top 405 Quotes & Sayings by Lyndon B. Johnson - Page 2

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

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.

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.

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.

If the American people don't love me, their descendants will.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Every President wants to do right.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

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.

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.

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.

Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

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.

This is not Johnson's war. This is America's war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

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.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.

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.

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.

Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.

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

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.

I believe the destiny of your generation - and your nation - is a rendezvous with excellence.

Whoever won't fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there.

I'm the only president you've got.

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.

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

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.

I'm a powerful S.O.B., you know that?

Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all the time. But Republicans haven't given up trying.

Did you ever think that making a speech on economy is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.

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

Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present.

Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.

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.

Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

Light at the end of the tunnel? We don't even have a tunnel; we don't even know where the tunnel is.

I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.

The crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight.

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.

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.

If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco.

I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.

Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement.

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.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. 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.

I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses.

But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.

Education is the key to opportunity in our society, and the equality of educational opportunity must be the birthright of every citizen.

Watch their hands, watch their eyes. Read eyes. No matter what a man is saying to you, it's not as important as what you can read in his eyes. The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you; the most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say.

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.

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

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