Quotes from Lyndon B. Johnson

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

I'm a powerful S.O.B., you know that?

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

Boys, it is just like the Alamo. Somebody should have by God helped those Texans. I'm going to Vietnam.

True poverty does not come from God.

For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.

Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says in Latin: "God has favored our undertaking." God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will.

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

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

We cannot have government for all the people until we first make certain it is government of and by all the people.

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

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

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

Of those to whom much is given, much is asked.

He's got great vision. If he can get outside, he can take it all the way. That's what we were worried about.

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 land flourished because it was fed from so many sources--because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.

Emancipation was a proclamation, but not a fact.

Today - wealthier, more powerful and more able than ever before in our history - our Nation can declare another essential freedom.

History may well record that we served liberty and saved freedom when we undertook a crash program in the field of education . . .. I hope this bill is only the forerunner of better things to come.

We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

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.

A President must call on many persons--some to man the ramparts and to watch the far away, distant posts; others to lead us in science, medicine, education and social progress here at home.

It (the heart) is supposed in popular language, to be the seat sometimes, of courage, sometimes of affection, sometimes of honesty, or baseness.