Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

No member of our generation who wasn’t a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

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

I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

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.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

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.

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

Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.

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

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.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.

Freedom is not enough.

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

A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

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.

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 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.