Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

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

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.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

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

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

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

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

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.

It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention.

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

Every President wants to do right.

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.

We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.

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

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

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.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

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

Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

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

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

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‚President Can’t Swim.‘

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

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

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.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

The 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.

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.

The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.

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

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

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.