Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources--because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Already a congressman, to a mentor I hope sometime you run across something you think I can do well 24 hours per day.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences - deep, corrosive, obstinate differences - radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. 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.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

[T]he vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean!In 1966 upon being told that President Charles DeGaulle had taken France out of NATO and that all U.S. troops must be evacuated off of French soil President Lyndon Johnson mentioned to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he should ask DeGaulle about the Americans buried in France. Dean implied in his answer that that DeGaulle should not really be asked that in the meeting at which point President Johnson then told Secretary of State Dean Rusk:Ask him about the cemeteries Dean!That made it into a Presidential Order so he had to ask President DeGaulle.So at end of the meeting Dean did ask DeGaulle if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil also included the 60,000+ soldiers buried in France from World War I and World War II.DeGaulle, embarrassed, got up and left and never answered.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Doing what's right isn't the problem. It's knowing what's right.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress and that is continuously incessantly and without interruption. If it's really going to work the relationship between the president and the Congress has got to be almost incestuous.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

While you're saving your face you're losing your ass. Never trust a man whose eyes are too close to his nose. I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket. Better inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The world has narrowed to a neighbourhood before it has broadened to a brotherhood.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

~ 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

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

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.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The moon and other celestial bodies should be free for exploration and use by all countries. No country should be permitted to advance a claim of sovereignty.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The separation of church and state is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

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.

~ 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

You aren't learning anything when you're talking.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

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

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I'd rather give my life than be afraid to give it.

~ 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

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

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

~ 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

I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

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

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson