WIST

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
“The Last Days of the President: LBJ in Retirement,” Atlantic Monthly (Jul 1973)

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her way. And second, let her have it.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

Face saving is not my major purpose in life. While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
In Philip Geyelin, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World (1966).

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

The best way to kill a new idea is to put it in an old-line agency.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

Quoted in Rowland Evans, Jr., and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson (1966)

People don’t support you because they like you. You can count on a person’s support only when you do something for him or something to him.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
In Richard Nixon, In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal, ch. 21 (1990)

It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
On FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; quoted in The New York Times (31 Oct 1971).

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
Private comment, quoted in John Kenneth Galbraith, Name-Dropping (1999).

Whatever the laws may provide, however lofty may be their sentiments, a man without a vote is a man without protection.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
Comment, as Senate Majority Leader.

Every President wants to do right.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
In George Christian, The President Steps Down, ch. 1 (1970).

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: “President Can’t Swim.”

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

No member of our generation who wasn’t a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice yo’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
In Bill Moyers, "What a Real President Was Like," Washington Post (13 Nov 1988)

That’s just the trouble, Sam Houston — it’s always my move. And damnit, I sometimes can’t tell whether I’m making the right move or not. Now take this Vietnam mess. How in the hell can anyone know for sure what’s right and what’s wrong, Sam?

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
In Sam Houston Johnson, My Brother Lyndon, ch. 1 (1969).

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
(Attributed)
Sometimes given as "You ain't learning anything when you're talking."

But now Nixon has come along and everything I’ve worked for is ruined. There’s a story in the paper every day about him slashing another one of my Great Society programs. I can just see him waking up in the morning, making that victory sign of his and deciding which program to kill. It’s a terrible thing for me to sit by and watch someone else starve my Great Society to death. She’s getting thinner and thinner and uglier and uglier all the time; now her bones are beginning to stick out and her wrinkles are beginning to show. Soon she’ll be so ugly that the American people will refuse to look at her; they’ll stick her in a closet to hide her away and there she’ll die. And when she dies, I, too, will die.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
LBJ and the American Dream, ch. 10 (1971)

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Time (5 Feb 1973)

Let us have our heroes. Let us continue to believe that some have been truly great; that it lies within human ability to overcome temptations and trials; that it is sublime to suffer and be strong. Petty biographers with inferior souls and jealous hearts would rob us of these happy privileges. Sensationalism is alright for yellow journalism, but in biography we wish to see our famous men and women as they were and feel the power of the strength and beauty of their lives. Down with the debunking biographers.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
College essay
In Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Formative Years, ch. 6, Southwest Texas State College Press (1965).

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: “Now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.” You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, “You are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe you have been completely fair. … This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity — not just legal equity but human ability — not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Commencement Address, Howard University (4 Jun 1965)
On Affirmative Action.

We know that most people’s intentions are good. We don’t question their motives; we’ve never said they’re unpatriotic, although they say some pretty ugly things about us. And we believe very strongly on preserving the right to differ in this country, and the right to dissent; and if I have done a good job of anything since I’ve been president, it’s to ensure that there are plenty of dissenters.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Comment (17 Nov 1967)
Quoted in Vietnam: A Television History, "Homefront USA" (1983)

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Comment (4 Mar 1964)

On the appointment of ten women to top posts, under his pledge to end a "stag government."

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Comment (Nov 1963)
Rejecting the Secret Service's advice not to march publicly in John Kennedy's funeral procession. In William Manchester, The Death of a President (1967).

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. He’s got to know them better than they know themselves. And then, on the basis of this knowledge, he’s got to build a system that stretches from the cradle to the grave, from the moment a bill is introduced to the moment it is officially enrolled as the law of the land.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Comment to Doris Kearns, in Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976)

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Special Message to Congress, “Toward Full Educational Opportunity” (12 Jan. 1965)

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech (30 Apr 1964)

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the House, Members of the Senate, my fellow Americans, all I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech before Congress (27 Nov 1963)
Five days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Congressional Record (House), Nov. 27, 1963, vol. 109, part 17, House Document 178, p. 22838, GPO (1963).

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 home — and we aim to get it.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech to government summer interns (4 Aug 1965)

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, Chamber of Commerce Barbeque, Smithville, Texas (15 Sep 1939)

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 don’t like to say this and wish I didn’t have to add these words to make it clear but I will — regardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, Civil Rights symposium, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas, (12 Dec 1972)

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. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have the right to vote. … Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes. … No law that we now have on the books … can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. … There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States’ rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, Congress (15 Mar 1965)
Introducing the Voting Rights Act

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, Illinois AFL-CIO Convention (1968)

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. To the extent that the Proclamation of Emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, Memorial Day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (30 May 1963)
    (Source)

The world has narrowed to a neighborhood before it has broadened to brotherhood.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, New York City (17 Dec 1963)
Johnson used this phrase in several speeches around this time, e.g., in a speech at the Pageant of Peace Ceremonies, Washington, DC (22 Dec 1963): "We hope that the world will not narrow into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood." Alternate: "We live in a world that has narrowed to a neighborhood before it has broadened to brotherhood."

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.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, Signing of the Voting Rights Act (6 Aug 1965)
    (Source)

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, UN General Assembly (17 Dec 1963)

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

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech, University of Michigan (22 May 1964)
    (Source)

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
State of the Union address (8 Jan 1964)