Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes (110 Quotes)

The test before us as a people is not whether our commitments match our will and our courage but whether we have the will and courage to match our commitments.

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

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

You aren't learning anything when you're talking.

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

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.

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

It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention.

Whoever won't fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

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.

The moon and other celestial bodies should be free for exploration and use by all countries. No country should be permitted to advance a claim of sovereignty.

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.

Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

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.

It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I'm a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can't be too small to suit me.

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

As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor

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.

Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

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

When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

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.

Every President wants to do right.

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

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

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You've got to just stand there and take it.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

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

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

I'm a compromiser and a maneuverer. I try to get something. That's the way our system works.

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.

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

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.

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

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.

I'm the only president you've got.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don't think anybody has held this job who hasn't felt personally responsible for those being killed.

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

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

This is not Johnson's war. This is America's war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

You've got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you've got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.

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.

For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground.

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.

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.

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

We come to reason, not to dominate. We do not seek to have our way, but to find a common way.

In our home there was always prayer - aloud, proud and unapologetic.