Quotes By Lyndon B. Johnson

Every President wants to do right.

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.

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.

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.

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

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.

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

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

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.

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.

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.

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

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

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.

If you let a bully come in your front yard, he'll be on your porch the next day and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

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

We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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