Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.

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

A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.

You ain't learnin' nothin' when you're talkin'.

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

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

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

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.

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.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

Did you ever think that making a speech on economy is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society.

I believe, with abiding conviction, that this people-nurtured by their deep faith, tutored by their hard lessons, moved by their high aspirations-have the will to meet the trials that these times impose.

The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman-and each nation-must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

All that Hubert needs over there is a gal to answer the phone and a pencil with an eraser on it.

There can no longer be anyone too poor to vote.

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

Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

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.

Hug your friends tight, but your enemies tighter ? hug ?em so tight they can?t wiggle.

Light at the end of the tunnel? We don't even have a tunnel; we don't even know where the tunnel is.

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

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.

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.

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

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.