President Lyndon Johnson Quotes

#1. In the last 100 years only Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford lost their bids for reelection. President Lyndon Johnson did not run for a second term.

Juan Williams

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. ****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

#6. Tell the Truth, and speak from your pay-grade. Don't try to answer questions that would better be directed to the battalion commander or Gen. William Westmoreland or President Lyndon Johnson. If you are a squad leader, answer questions about what you know and do.

Hal Moore

#7. (President) Lyndon Johnson still snapped between exultation and insecurity.

Rick Perlstein

#8. President Kennedy's eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson's hammer blows are designed to make men act.

Robert A. Caro

#9. 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 B. Johnson

#10. The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#11. It's not doing what is right that's hard for a President. It's knowing what is right.

Lyndon Johnson

#12. I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president.

Jack Valenti

#13. President Can't Swim.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#14. Lyndon Johnson is not a comfortable model for President Obama to imitate. He is an all-but-forgotten president - pilloried for the failed war in Vietnam and criticized for grandiose reforms conservatives denounce as the epitome of federal social engineering that costs too much and does too little.

Robert Dallek

#15. Every President wants to do right.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#16. The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.

Jesse Jackson

#17. I will not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#18. The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources
because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#19. 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

#20. Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

Robert Dallek

#21. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was vigorously and vociferously opposed by the Southern states. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law nonetheless.

Henry Rollins

#22. When downed American pilots were first taken prisoner in North Vietnam in 1964, U.S. policy became pretty much to ignore them - part and parcel of President Lyndon B. Johnson's determination to keep the costs of his increasingly futile military escalation in Southeast Asia from the public.

Rick Perlstein

#23. 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.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#24. The 1960s:
A lot of people remember hating President Lyndon Baines Johnson and loving Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, depending on the point of view. God rest their souls.

Richard Brautigan

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. A President must call on many persons
some to man the ramparts and to watch the far away, distant posts; others to lead us in science, medicine, education and social progress here at home.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#28. Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency.

Robert Caro

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#32. A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as his war.

Glenn Greenwald

#33. My most fervent prayer is to be a President who can make it possible for every boy in this land to grow to manhood by loving his country
instead of dying for it.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#34. I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#35. Free speech, free press, free religion, the right of free assembly, yes, the right of petition ... well, they are still radical ideas.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#36. What we won when all of our people united must not be lost in suspicion and distrust and selfishness and politics. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as president.

Lyndon B. Johnson

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

McGeorge Bundy

#38. 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

#39. I'm the only president you've got.

Lyndon B. Johnson

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

Lyndon B. Johnson

#41. People in the age of [President] Obama don't dress like they did in the age of [Lyndon] Johnson. That's for sure.

Al Sharpton

#42. A good president does with executive power what Pablo Picasso did with paint. He takes bills into new and slightly discomfiting territory. He puts extra eyes on policies. He moves the mouth of the Supreme Court from where it should be to where it must be.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#43. A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

Lyndon B. Johnson