Lyndon B. Johnson
When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.
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.
While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass.
We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.
The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.
Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.
You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.
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.
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.
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 feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.
I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.
We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
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.
John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.
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.
When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.
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.
I am making a collection of the things my opponents have found me to be and, when this election is over, I am going to open a museum and put them on display.
The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.Collection: Money
I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.Collection: Years
Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all the time. But Republicans haven't given up trying.Collection: People
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Friends
Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.Collection: Friends
When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled.Collection: Family
I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses.Collection: Loyalty
I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.Collection: Vision
We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.Collection: Wise
The crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight.Collection: Nuts
Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.Collection: Home
Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present.Collection: Past
If we must disagree, let's disagree without being disagreeable.Collection: Ifs
Watch their hands, watch their eyes. Read eyes. No matter what a man is saying to you, it's not as important as what you can read in his eyes. The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you; the most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say.Collection: Eye
It's the price of leadership to do the thing you believe has to be done at the time it must be done.Collection: Believe
The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing. For, though in every age there are some who, by bold adventures, or by favorable accidents, rise suddenly to riches, yet it is dangerous to indulge hopes of such rare events; and the bulk of mankind must owe their affluence to small and gradual profits, below which their expense must be resolutely reduced.Collection: Adventure
In 1790, the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren't much happier about taxation with representation.Collection: Citizens
The Secretary of Labor is in charge of finding you a job, the Secretary of the Treasury is in charge of taking half the money you make away from you, and the Attorney General is in charge of suing you for the other half.Collection: Jobs
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom.Collection: Fate
In modern warfare there are no victors; there are only survivors.Collection: War
All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn't fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn't fair.Collection: Texas
In my state, on the basis of the separate but equal doctrine, we have made enormous strides over the years in the education of both races. Personally, I think it would have been sounder judgment to allow that progress to continue through the process of natural evolution. However, there is no point crying about spilt milk.Collection: Education
If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.Collection: Peace
...International education cannot be the work of one country. It is the responsibility and promise of all nations. It calls for free exchange and full collaboration...The knowledge of our citizens is one treasure which grows only when it is shared.Collection: Country
Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject itself, or know where to find it.Collection: Two
I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I dont like to say this and wish I didnt have to add these words to make it clear but I willregardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age.Collection: Sex