Lyndon B. Johnson

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

Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.

I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.

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.

The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.

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

I am a freeman an American a United States Senator and a Democrat in that order.

Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way and the other is to let her have it.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he's going to get sick on it.

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

Every President wants to do right.

While you're saving your face you're losing your ass.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

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.

If the American people don't love me their descendants will.

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.

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

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

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.

Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.

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.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

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

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

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.

Just like the Alamo somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well by God I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!

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.

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.

You've got to work things out in the cloakroom and when you've got them worked out you can debate a little before you vote.

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.

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law.

Freedom is not enough.

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.

We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate but there is no one else.

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.

The guns and the bombs the rockets and the warships are all symbols of human failure.

This is not Johnson's war. This is America's war. If I drop dead tomorrow this war will still be with you.

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

The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

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.

It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I'm a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can't be too small to suit me.

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

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.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people using their government as an instrument and a tool can do toward building the whole man which will mean a better society and a better world.

I'm the only president you've got.