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Quotes by Lyndon B. Johnson


We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in 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
America is not merely a nation but a nation of nations.
– 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
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
It is the excitement of becoming - always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again- but always trying and always gaining...
– Lyndon B. Johnson
You aren't learning anything when you're talking.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
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.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
– 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
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.
– 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
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
This is not Johnson's war. This is America's war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
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.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
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.
– 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
The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.
– 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 guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.
– 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
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.
– 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
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
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.
– 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
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
In our home there was always prayer - aloud, proud and unapologetic.
– 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'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
I'd rather give my life than be afraid to give it.
– 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
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
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.
– 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
I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.
– 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
Freedom is not enough.
– Lyndon B. Johnson
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.
– Lyndon B. Johnson