Top 405 Quotes & Sayings by Lyndon B. Johnson - Page 3

If we must disagree, let's disagree without being disagreeable.

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.

I'm gonna hunker down like a jack rabbit in a dust storm

There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing. For, though in every age there are some who, by bold adventures, or by favorable accidents, rise suddenly to riches, yet it is dangerous to indulge hopes of such rare events; and the bulk of mankind must owe their affluence to small and gradual profits, below which their expense must be resolutely reduced.

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.

Education will not cure all the problems of society, but without it no cure for any problem is possible.

Our understanding of how to live with one another is still far behind our knowledge of how to destroy one another.

I am proud to be a member of a party that opens its doors to all men--and closes its hearts to none.

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

Heck by the time a man scratches his behind, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we've already wasted fifteen minutes.

Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't walk and chew gum at the same time.... He's a nice fellow, but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet.

The Organization of American States couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

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.

This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.

The Secretary of Labor is in charge of finding you a job, the Secretary of the Treasury is in charge of taking half the money you make away from you, and the Attorney General is in charge of suing you for the other half.

It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

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.

...International education cannot be the work of one country. It is the responsibility and promise of all nations. It calls for free exchange and full collaboration...The knowledge of our citizens is one treasure which grows only when it is shared.

'If you let a bully come in and chase you out of your front yard, he'll be on your porch and the next day he'll rape your wife in your own bed.

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.

'All men are created equal', 'government by consent of the governed', 'give me liberty or give me death'. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.

Any man who's not willing to take half a loaf in a negotiation, well, that man never went to bed hungry.

Hug your friends tight, but your enemies tighter ? hug ?em so tight they can?t wiggle.

If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.

But if future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than with sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as God really made it, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

We have always believed that our people can stand on no higher ground than the school ground, or can enter any more hopeful room than the classroom. We blend time and faith and knowledge in our schools - not only to create educated citizens, but also to shape the destiny of this great Republic.

Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate.

Sometimes among our more sophisticated, self-styled intellectuals--and I say self-styled advisedly; the real intellectual I am notsure would ever feel this way--some of them are more concerned with appearance than they are with achievement. They are more concerned with style then they are with mortar, brick and concrete. They are more concerned with trivia and the superficial than they are with the things that have really built America.

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

It's the price of leadership to do the thing you believe has to be done at the time it must be done.

There's something special for everyone to do. Remember, no experience is a bad experience unless you gain nothing from it.

Ambition is an uncomfortable companion many times. He creates a discontent with present surroundings and achievements; he is never satisfied but always pressing forward to better things in the future. Restless, energetic, purposeful, it is ambition that makes of the creature a real man.

In the Great Society, work shall be an outlet for mans interests and desires. Each individual shall have full opportunity to use his capacities in employment which satisfies personally and contributes generally to the quality of the Nations life.

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.

To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.

You know when you're milking a cow and you have all that foamy white milk in the bucket and you're just about through, when all of a sudden the cow switches her tail through a pile of manure and slaps it into that foamy white milk. That's Bill Fulbright.

In 1790, the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren't much happier about taxation with representation.

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.

We need to remember that the separation of church and state must never mean the separation of religious values from the lives of public servants. . . If we who serve free men today are to differ from the tyrants of this age, we must balance the powers in our hands with God in our hearts.

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.

Nothing comes free. Nothing. Not even good, especially not good.

To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all.

In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from the land.

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

If you're not listening, you're not learning.

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.

In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change.

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.

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.

This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.

Art is a nation's most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.

Free speech, free press, free religion, the right of free assembly, yes, the right of petition... well, they are still radical ideas.

A nation that fails to plan intelligently for the development and protection of its precious waters will be condemned to wither because of its shortsightedness. The hard lessons of history are clear, written on the deserted sands and ruins of once proud civilizations.

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

We believe, that is, you and I, that education is not an expense. We believe it is an investment.

In modern warfare there are no victors; there are only survivors.

The American city should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feels safe on his streets and in the house of his friends. It should be a place where each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today.