Top 775 Lyndon Johnson Quotes & Sayings

[Lyndon Baines ] Johnson is a big and larger-than-life guy, we just tried to give him the dynamic range that he actually had.

Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency.

Lyndon Johnson faced some clear moral issues.

I see [Lyndon] Johnson as the war in Vietnam, and the invasion of the Dominican Republic and so on. So I'm not a liberal in that sense, because i think of liberals as part of that establishment.

I wasn't part of John Kennedy's vision of the world, or Lyndon Johnson's. I thought of them as anti-Communist imperial monsters.

Lyndon Johnson (with Abraham Lincoln close behind). Johnson was able to get things done, to read other people, and to adjust his own approach accordingly. One of the reasons he has so fascinated biographer Robert Caro over the years is Johnson's consummate skill in acquiring and using influence.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was vigorously and vociferously opposed by the Southern states. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law nonetheless.

It's not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it's the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.

Every politician - FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - they're all conservative by nature. They are part of the big thing and they're moving in a very constrained world.

Those days [of the Vietnam War] you couldn't get on a bus going to the South without expecting a riot over something or the other. All of that has disappeared thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

I was introduced to Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson. The young Congressman was very friendly.

Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.

It may not be too late, whatever happens, if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me. But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing.

Throughout American history, we have elected presidents who had not been honest man. Warren Harding, Richard Nixon, to some extent, Lyndon Johnson just to name a few.

A key to McMaster's thinking is his 1997 book, 'Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.'

Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

When former president Lyndon B. Johnson unveiled his plans for the program that would become Medicaid, he reflected on the future of public policy in the United States.

He (Lyndon B. Johnson) wanted to see poverty, so he came to see my team (1964 New York Mets).

Originally, John Kennedy was going to come speak, and then Lyndon Johnson. Because it was October of '62, neither made it because of the Cuban missile crisis.

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

The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear.

President Lyndon Johnson was very, very unpredictable. We never knew for sure what he is going to do next, and he preferred to have it that way; if he could do something as a complete surprise, that was his preference.

During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson.

One of the most unusual shuttles operates at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Site in Texas, carrying visitors on a one and one-half hour trip past Johnson's birthplace, the family cemetery and ranch house, and through the ranch.

Lyndon Johnson was a profoundly insecure man who feared dissent and craved reassurance. In 1964 and 1965, Johnson's principal goals were to win the presidency in his own right and to pass his Great Society legislation through Congress.

Now in my view, if you were to line up the Presidents in the order of who made the greatest accomplishments, you'd put Lyndon Johnson in that arena with both Roosevelts probably, and [Abraham] Lincoln and so on. But the idea that Lyndon Johnson was operating as a free agent and coming up with these ideas on his own is nonsense.

Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it).

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.

One wonders if Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon's administrations may come to be viewed, in the future, as having been underestimated in some respects. To be sure, each ended in failure. Nonetheless, Johnson's accomplishments in civil rights and immigration legislation, and Nixon's in respect to relations with China, may loom larger with the passage of time.

Lyndon Johnson, his 44-state landslide in 1964 and Great Society notwithstanding, was by 1968 a failed president being repudiated in the primaries of his own party.

Lyndon Johnson may have escalated the war, but when I was drafted and shipped off to Vietnam, the signature on my orders was Nixon's.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?'

The unraveling of America's long mid-century domestic consensus, which ran from about 1941 to 1966, had begun earlier, under Lyndon B. Johnson.

Lyndon Johnson rose above the doubt and fear to hold this Nation on course until we rediscovered our faith in ourselves.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?

In the last 100 years only Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford lost their bids for reelection. President Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term.

Lyndon Johnson, I know for a fact, was a great president. And I don't mean by that he was a great man.

Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work.

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president. Obama has that voice. It has to be used.

Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work

Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam were perfect for Lyndon Johnson: 220 million against 18 million, water buffalo and all. No risk, really.

[Lyndon Baines Johnson ] technique in negotiation would be that he'd lean into you and take away your personal space, it didn't matter your party affiliation when he was trying to convince you of something.

Bobby Kennedy's conduct toward Lyndon Johnson was childish and despicable. As the years went on, he displayed nasty, self-pitying, and messianic qualities that would have made him a dangerously authoritarian president.

I did nothing worse than Lyndon Johnson. He was for segregation when he thought he had to be. I was for segregation, and I was wrong. The media has rehabilitated Johnson; why won't it rehabilitate me?

Volumes in the series on Lyndon Johnson, including Master of the Senate and The Path Power, describe how Johnson created resources out of nothing and built a substantial power base.

A lot of people were ambivalent about Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 positioned himself as the peace candidate. Once Johnson sent large amounts of troops into battle in 1965, most Americans were behind the war.

Back in the '40's, Lyndon Johnson could still steal a Senate election in South Texas with the help of the big patrons.

I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president.

After Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the belief in decent housing as a political right or social obligation was supplanted in the U.S. by the notion that suitable shelter should be an act of charity.

One of the things that I'm doing and I'm - we have the Johnson Amendment. You know what that is. That Lyndon Johnson in the 1950s passed an amendment because supposedly he was having a hard time with a church in Houston, with a pastor. And he passed an amendment saying basically if you're a pastor, if you're a religious person, you cannot get up and talk politics.

Lyndon Johnson believed the poor deserved a better life than the economy was providing them. He thought private power and greed had to be checked by a vibrant democracy.

People in the age of [President] Obama don't dress like they did in the age of [Lyndon] Johnson. That's for sure.

I'd put the most money on Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson - and not just because we'll probably still be waiting for the final volume in 2017.

Presidents and Lyndon Johnson was really no exception, very rapidly learned the difference between a contingency plan and an authorized act.

I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends. But I never seriously considered it as a career choice.

Anyway, in 1966, Daddy had started to attack Lyndon Johnson on the war in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson was a good man. Even though he was a Southern conservative, Lyndon Johnson passed more civil-rights legislation than any other president in history.

One doesn't simply write about Lyndon Johnson. You get the Johnson treatment from beyond the grave - arm around you, nose to nose. I should admit that he also reminds me of my father, quite an overbearing and narcissistic character. And in some ways, he reminds me of myself. Another workaholic.

The 1960s: A lot of people remember hating President Lyndon Baines Johnson and loving Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, depending on the point of view. God rest their souls.

[Lyndon ] Johnson was responding to a black freedom movement that was tearing the country open and he did what he had to do as a conservative politician.

You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose.