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 B. Johnson
No member of our generation who wasn’t a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn. – Lyndon B. Johnson
We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood. – 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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it. – Lyndon B. Johnson
Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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. – Lyndon B. Johnson
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 B. Johnson
We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. – Lyndon B. Johnson
Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store. – Lyndon B. Johnson
You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy. – Lyndon B. Johnson
Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I’m going to Viet Nam’s aid! – Lyndon B. Johnson
