Quotes from 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."

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.

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.

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.

Freedom is not enough.

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.

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.

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.

A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children.

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.

About Edgar J Hoover "I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in"

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

America has not always been kind to its artists and scholars. Somehow the scientists always seem to get the penthouse while the arts and humanities get the basement.

America is not merely a nation but a nation of nations.

As it was 189 years ago, so today the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. And I am proud this morning to salute you as fellow revolutionaries. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. We want it both abroad and at homeand we aim to get it.

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

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

Every child must be encouraged to get as much education as he has the ability to take. We want this not only for his sakebut for the nations sake. Nothing matters more to the future of our country: not military preparednessfor armed might is worthless if we lack the brain power to build a world of peace; not our productive economyfor we cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of governmentfor freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.

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

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

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

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

Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right. All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.

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.