Lyndon Johnson Quotes

(Lyndon) Johnson created his own theater. ~ Robert A. Caro

Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean!"
In 1966 upon being told that President Charles DeGaulle had taken France out of NATO and that all U.S. troops must be evacuated off of French soil President Lyndon Johnson mentioned to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he should ask DeGaulle about the Americans buried in France. Dean implied in his answer that that DeGaulle should not really be asked that in the meeting at which point President Johnson then told Secretary of State Dean Rusk:
"Ask him about the cemeteries Dean!"
That made it into a Presidential Order so he had to ask President DeGaulle.
So at end of the meeting Dean did ask DeGaulle if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil also included the 60,000+ soldiers buried in France from World War I and World War II.
DeGaulle, embarrassed, got up and left and never answered. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Johnson was a master of self-justification. According to his biographer Robert Caro, when Johnson came to believe in something, he would believe in it "totally, with absolute conviction, regardless of previous beliefs, or of the facts in the matter." George Reedy, one of Johnson's aides, said that he "had a remarkable capacity to convince himself that he held the principles he should hold at any given time, and there was something charming about the air of injured innocence with which he would treat anyone who brought forth evidence that he had held other views in the past. It was not an act… He had a fantastic capacity to persuade himself that the 'truth' which was convenient for the present was the truth and anything that conflicted with it was the prevarication of enemies. He literally willed what was in his mind to become reality." Although Johnson's supporters found this to be a rather charming aspect of the man's character, it might well have been one of the major reasons that Johnson could not extricate the country from the quagmire of Vietnam. A president who justifies his actions only to the public might be induced to change them. A president who has justified his actions to himself, believing that he has the truth, becomes impervious to self-correction. ~ Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson

Dignity was a luxury in a fight with Lyndon Johnson, a luxury too expensive to afford. ~ Robert A. Caro

When Kennedy could not get the civil rights bill passed - and he was the big liberal - Lyndon Johnson came in and it got passed, and he was the conservative and the southerner. So sometimes in politics, to get something done, it takes a special kind of knowledge and a special kind of person, but it doesn't always follow the party lines. ~ Jim Brown

Lyndon Johnson rose above the doubt and fear to hold this Nation on course until we rediscovered our faith in ourselves. ~ Richard M. Nixon

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

(President) Lyndon Johnson still snapped between exultation and insecurity. ~ Rick Perlstein

It's not doing what is right that's hard for a President. It's knowing what is right. ~ Lyndon Johnson

He [Lyndon Johnson] hated the war. He hated having anybody put in harm away. But he believed that what we were doing is what we had to do for our commitments with SEATO, for many reasons. And he was carrying forth a policy that he had inherited. And he tried and got us to the peace table in 1968. ~ Lynda Bird Johnson Robb

Lyndon Johnson faced some clear moral issues. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

When I got back to NY had the opportunity to work with the beginning years of the poetry project which was founded with money from the OEO under Lyndon Johnson to work with alienated youth on the lower East side. This was extraordinary, to be able to help then to create a culture that would capture the energy that I felt at Berkley. ~ Anne Waldman

Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam were perfect for Lyndon Johnson: 220 million against 18 million, water buffalo and all. No risk, really. ~ David Douglas Duncan

Bobby Kennedy's conduct toward Lyndon Johnson was childish and despicable. As the years went on, he displayed nasty, self-pitying, and messianic qualities that would have made him a dangerously authoritarian president. ~ Thomas Mallon

Lyndon Johnson. The junior congressman saw two things that no one else saw. The first was a possible connection between two groups that had previously had no link: conservative Texas oilmen and contractors - most notably his financial backer, Herman Brown, of Brown & Root - who needed federal contracts and tax breaks and were willing to spend money, a lot of money, to get them; and the scores of northern, liberal congressmen, running for re-election, who needed money for their campaigns. The second was that he could become that link. ~ Robert A. Caro

It's Kennedy's war, Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson got all the flak, but it's Kennedy's war. ~ Salman Rushdie

The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear. ~ Paul Johnson

You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose. ~ Eugene McCarthy

Determining the essence of different points of view (what Lyndon Johnson called "listening"), ~ Robert A. Caro

I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president. ~ Jack Valenti

In 1964, I tried to convince my grandfather, who was active in the New York City firefighters union, to vote for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson because at the time I thought his approach to limited government was right on. ~ Joe Lhota

Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child's life - the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you'll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. ~ Jeff Greenfield

There's a reason you probably haven't heard much about this aspect of the heartland. This kind of blight can't be easily blamed on the usual suspects like government or counterculture or high-hat urban policy. The villain that did this to my home state wasn't the Supreme Court or Lyndon Johnson, showering dollars on the poor or putting criminals back on the street. The culprit is the conservatives' beloved free-market capitalism, a system that, at its most unrestrained, has little use for smalltown merchants or the agricultural system that supported the small towns in the first place ... ~ Thomas Frank

Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on 'Laugh In' in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it. ~ Christopher Buckley

I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it. ~ Richard Holbrooke

He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those whom social justice had so long been denied. The restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed to be given some dignity. The redeemer of the promises made by them to America. "It is time to write it in the books of law." By the time Lyndon Johnson left office he had done a lot of writing in those books, had become, above all presidents save Lincoln, the codifier of compassion, the president who wrote mercy and justice in the statute books by which America was governed. ~ Robert A. Caro

David Halberstam quoted Lyndon Johnson saying of a staffer: I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. ~ David Halberstam

In truth, there will never be enough power in the presidency for an incumbent to make good on a purely constructive leadership project, and it is unlikely that there will ever be another president stretched so thinly by a determination to use great power to do just that. Lyndon Johnson was a full-service president who had at his disposal an alignment of political resources, economic resources, international resources, and military resources unmatched in the annals of presidential history. The problem is that in a full-service presidency, where no interest of political significance is denied a modicum of legitimacy, resources turn fickle; the exercise of power consumes authority. Committed to a wholly affirmative result, Johnson could not rest content to let anyone carry the brunt of change. ~ Stephen Skowronek

Originally, John Kennedy was going to come speak, and then Lyndon Johnson. Because it was October of '62, neither made it because of the Cuban missile crisis. ~ David Maraniss

Lyndon Johnson, I know for a fact, was a great president. And I don't mean by that he was a great man. ~ Eileen Myles

Lyndon Johnson may have escalated the war, but when I was drafted and shipped off to Vietnam, the signature on my orders was Nixon's. ~ Bob Gunton

IS WHERE POWER GOES: the most significant factor in any equation that adds up to political power, Lyndon Johnson had assured his allies, is the individual, not the office; for a man with a gift for acquiring power, whatever office he held would become powerful - because of what he would make out of it. Johnson ~ Robert A. Caro

If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. ~ Jeff Greenfield

Pres. Lyndon Johnson was a middle-aged man of smalltown America, both a Westerner and a Southerner, and except where politics had demonstrably forced his growth-as on the question of civil rights-he functioned like most men, as a product of his background. ~ Tom Wicker

You know,' Russell said, 'we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.' There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role - perhaps the largest role - in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remark. 'We could have beaten Kennedy on civil rights, but we can't Lyndon. ~ Robert A. Caro

Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. After attending his first Cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara. "Well, Lyndon," Mister Sam answered, "you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once." It is my favorite story in the book, for it underlines the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal fluency which the team exuded, and the true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam. ~ David Halberstam

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of our age is the subsiding of all other concerns to the predominance of politics. And thus, we have succumbed to a Lyndon Johnson-like dependence upon the power of the state.

The tragic result has been that all of life has been politicized, and if the new social engineers have their way, politics will increase in power - especially in its power to penetrate into our everyday lives and rule our destinies. For in fact politics has become, for many of the political elite, a kind of state religion. ~ George Grant

My mother missed having dinner with Lyndon Johnson because she couldn't find the right hat to wear. While my father went off to the white house to break bread with the President, my mother, who's not a things and stuff person, stayed at the hotel and tried on 10 different hats and missed dinner. ~ Emilio Estevez

During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson. ~ Robert Dallek

Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. ~ Robert A. Caro

Reagan understood an important distinction that (Lyndon) Johnson never grasped: being in control and being successful aren't always the same thing. ~ Jonathan Darman

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy. ~ James Q. Wilson

Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life. ~ Robert A. Caro

(Until the end of their lives, these men and women would tell stories about the summer they followed Lyndon Johnson and his Flying Windmill around Texas; as Oliver Knight of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would write about one trip, "That mad dash from Navasota to Conroe in which I dodged stumps at 70 MPH just to keep up with that contraption will ever be green in my memory.") At the landing site, there would be the brief respite ~ Robert A. Caro

Had I been allowed to testify, I would have told them that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the bullet that killed President Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll area. I would have also informed the Warren Commission about the call I received from Lyndon Johnson while we were operating on Lee Harvey Oswald. President Johnson told me that a man in the operating room would get a deathbed confession from Oswald. ~ Charles A. Crenshaw

As several historians have pointed out, it would have made little sense for Fidel to do something that would risk having his country invaded in retaliation, just to make Lyndon Johnson President. ~ Lamar Waldron

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?' ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

President Lyndon Johnson was very, very unpredictable. We never knew for sure what he is going to do next, and he preferred to have it that way; if he could do something as a complete surprise, that was his preference. ~ Clint Hill

Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case. ~ George Friedman

Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Then Lyndon Johnson came to Jim Rowe's office again, to plead with him, crying real tears as he sat doubled over, his face in his hands. "He wept. 'I'm going to die. You're an old friend. I thought you were my friend and you don't care that I'm going to die. It's just selfish of you, typically selfish.' " Finally Rowe said, " 'Oh, goddamn it, all right' " - and then "as soon as Lyndon got what he wanted," Rowe was forcibly reminded why he had been determined not to join his staff. The moment the words were out of Rowe's mouth, Johnson straightened up, and his tone changed instantly from one of pleading to one of cold command. "Just remember," he said. "I make the decisions. You don't. ~ Robert A. Caro

If one characteristic of Lyndon Johnson was a boundless ambition, another was a willingness, on behalf of that ambition, to make efforts that were also without bounds. ~ Robert A. Caro

But this belief demonstrated only that Lyndon Johnson simply had not grasped that there was another world, a world in which Douglas and Lehman were not crazies but heroes, in which principles mattered far more than they did in the Senate. In addition, Lyndon Johnson had not fully appreciated that it didn't matter what he did for the liberals in Social Security and housing so long as he was not on their side on the "great issue." He should have appreciated this. ~ Robert A. Caro

It is not clear who will bring to the Whitehouse those useful commodities of vivid language, a sense of history and most important - a sense of humour, but Johnson himself will provide many other attributes. He is effective precisely because he is so determined, industrious, personal and even humourless, particularly in dealing with Congress. ( ... ) Kennedy had a detached and even donnish willingness to grant a merit in the other fellow's argument. Johnson is not so inclined to retreat and grants nothing in an argument, not even equal time. Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. This may not be the most attractive quality of the new administration but it works. The lovers of style are not too happy with the new administration, but the lovers of substance are not complaining. ~ Robert A. Caro

****your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If those two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good. President Lyndon Johnson to the Greek ambassador in Washington (1964) ~ Richard Clogg

For better than thirty years, as a working historian, I have written on leaders I knew, such as Lyndon Johnson, and interviewed intimates of the Kennedy family and many who knew Franklin Roosevelt, a leader perhaps as indispensable in his way as was Lincoln to the social and political direction of the country. After living with the subject ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

President Lyndon Johnson once said, "If the first person who answers the phone cannot answer your question, it is a bureaucracy." Don ~ Robert M. Gates

It was Abraham Lincoln who struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life. How true a part? Forty-three years later, a mere blink of history's eye, a black American, Barack Obama, was sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office. ~ Robert A. Caro

Presidents and Lyndon Johnson was really no exception, very rapidly learned the difference between a contingency plan and an authorized act. ~ McGeorge Bundy

A handshake, as delivered by Lyndon Johnson, could be as effective as a hug. ~ Robert A. Caro

It may not be too late, whatever happens, if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me. But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing. ~ Jack Ruby

Surely, if we can land a spaceship on Mars, we can certainly put a voter ID card in the hand of every eligible voter. ~ Andrew Young

Before Lyndon Johnson intervened to make sure blacks would become dependent on the government for just about everything they needed to live, black participation in the labor market was equal to or greater than that of whites. Today the "official" African-American unemployment rate - which doesn't take into account the enormous number of blacks who aren't even trying to find jobs - is around 14 percent. In fact, when you count those who don't even try to find a job, it's nearly 50 percent. When the numbers are added up, under this administration more than 60 percent of young black people are no longer even part of the labor force. It's the lowest ever recorded in our history. ~ Michael Savage

Lyndon Johnson wanted to emancipate the whites as much as people of color, because he knew how, particularly in the South, but not only in the South, we were so restricted. And he wanted everybody to live up to the best that God gave them and use those tools of education and have good health care, to be able to do the things to make America great. ~ Lynda Bird Johnson Robb

The second most powerful man in the country." All his life Lyndon Johnson had been taking "nothing jobs" and making them into something - something big. And now, no sooner ~ Robert A. Caro

We have talked long enough ... about civil rights,' Lyndon Johnson had said. 'It is time ... to write it in the books of law' - to embody justice and equality in legislation. ~ Robert A. Caro

Little boy crying. "My daddy has been dead for 10 yrs, but he came to town to vote for Lyndon Johnson, and didn't come to see me. ~ Robert Cato

[Richard Bedford Bennett] was the richest Prime Minister and the only millionaire to hold office before Pierre Trudeau. His money obviously colored his thinking
colored it true blue
but he did not consider it a political drawback. No leader, he said, could serve the public properly if he was constantly looking over his shoulder at the shadow of debts. This theory is now widely accepted in the United States where it has become practically impossible for a non-millionaire to run for high office without selling pieces of himself like a prize-fighter. Yet the public still suspects a self-made millionaire like Lyndon Johnson while revering the much-richer John F. Kennedy, who got it all from his father. ~ Gordon Donaldson

Lyndon Johnson knew how to make the most of such enthusiasm and how to play on it and intensify it. He wanted his audience to become involved. He wanted their hands up in the air. And having been a schoolteacher he knew how to get their hands up. He began, in his speeches, to ask questions. ~ Robert A. Caro

You need to make a trip to Des Moines in August, because the Iowa State Fair really is a sight to see. The Iowa Fairgrounds are usually packed for those 11 days, and you get a real sense of what a classic Midwest fair is all about. ~ Zach Johnson

I don't plan on going back to legal work. I wanted an international career, and finance seemed to be where some interesting career opportunities were. ~ Nick Johnson

Being lucky is a fool's dream, winning through deceit is a coward's intent, success without caring for others is a complete failure. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

We could park the van and walk to town, find cheapest bottle of wine that we could find. And talk about the road behind, how getting lost is not a waste of time. ~ Jack Johnson

We settled in a booth at Bishop's 4th Street Diner, an aging silver zeppelin on the rotary outside the naval base, grungy and stuffed with Betty Boop tchotchkes in the windows. The waitress greeted Abbass familiarly and promptly took her order: a hamburger, rare, and fries. ~ Marilyn Johnson

I have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good. ~ Samuel Johnson

If the guardian or the mother
Tell the woes of willful waste,
Scorn their counsel and their pother,
You can hang or drown at last. ~ Samuel Johnson

We are here because we share a fundamental belief: that poverty, illiteracy, disease and inequality do not belong in the twenty-first century. We share a common purpose: to eradicate these ills for the benefit of all. And we share a common tool to achieve this: the Millennium Development Goals. ~ Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

You don't need everyone to like you, just the right one(s)! ~ LaTonya "Tee" Johnson

Anything you fear is a shackle to ur soul. It is a phobia that tethers and blinds ur ability to see and comprehend your life directions, making you feel discouraged and hopeless in times of danger ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

When lorry drivers come up behind me and I'm cycling, innocently keeping to my side of the road, and they decide because they are so big, and their lorry is so powerful, and they just want to clear me out of the road, and they hoot aggressively, then I do see red a bit. I do. ~ Boris Johnson

The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds. ~ Philip Johnson

When I'm writing for Esquire, my conscious thought is, I'm not writing for American Scholar. ~ Denis Johnson

When I think about filmmakers and actresses that I have admired my whole life, I've admired their entire body of work. ~ Dakota Johnson

He didn't like having to start the fire again, that was the source of this small sadness. You get tired of these endless beginnings. ~ Denis Johnson

When you marry a woman out of pity, then its a pity that you'll send her away very soon. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

I started rereading 'The Dutchman' - I kind of just pulled it off the shelf. ~ Rashid Johnson

Nothing ever happened except God. ~ Joyce Johnson

A Christian's celebration of Christmas should be a lot different from that of nonbelievers. ~ Monica Johnson

I used to design for my body, which was flat-chested with big hips. That's why my clothes were tight on top with full skirts. ~ Betsey Johnson

Never try to explain a 5-by-7 vision to someone with a 3-by-5 experience. It rarely works out the way you'd like it to. ~ LC Johnson

My Cheese? is a story about change ~ Spencer Johnson

Why is it , for a woman who is on welfare, that stays at home and doesn't work or contribute financially to the welfare of her children, isn't locked up for non-child support. ~ Deborah Denise Johnson

I always hated it when TV reporters stuck a microphone in the faces of people who'd just lost a home or a loved one, wanting to know how they felt. They felt like shit. They hurt, and they didn't know how they were going to get through the night. They wanted to scream and cry and hit the guy with the microphone. ~ Suzanne Johnson

American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School. ~ Philip Johnson

Pacifists lead a lonely life. Not even gathering together can take the place of that vast, warm sun of approval that is shed on motherhood, on law-abiding, on killing, and on making money. Someday will we come into our own? Well, motherhood may move into the shade. Law-abiding is going through a trauma. But killing and making money are good for a long, long time. ~ Josephine Winslow Johnson

The only hope for healing is to offer a better form of ecstasy, to upgrade so the addict will give up the stupid one. ~ Robert A. Johnson

There is a wisdom in the body that is older and more reliable than clocks and calendars. ~ John H. Johnson

Golf is a weird sport. Some days you got it. Some days you don't. ~ Dustin Johnson

Most of us don't win instantly.
Instant wins usually don't last.
Real wins come slow.
Real wins don't come easy,
But they do come.
And when we win,
It is extraordinary! ~ Deborah D. Johnson

Howie?" Arthur says.

"What?"

"Why do you want me to freak out?" He asks it sort of gently, which makes it worse somehow.

"Because you make me freak out all the time." Maybe I'm not so totally chill, but whatever, whatever, I'm sick of it. "Like, honestly, I'm pretty sure I've started doing it professionally. Maybe you should start considering paying me extra. 'Cause seriously, dude, when it comes to freaking out about you, I am the master. I am friggin' incomparable, I got mad skills all over the place. And I don't think this is exactly mutual freaking out, like, I don't get the sense that I make you want to wither and die and explode. And that's okay. That's cool. I'm kind of going through a thing here that you probably went through a long time ago, unless you didn't go through it at all because you're just all together, like, you popped out of the womb, all, 'Thanks for squeezing me out, Mom; no more pussy for me. ~ Hannah Johnson