Quotes by Lyndon Johnson
This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best; that is all I can do. I ask for your help and God's.
— First official statement as President, November 22, 1963
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
—On seeing anti-black graffiti in Tennessee, 1970 (Attributed by Bill Moyers)
That bitch of a war killed the lady I really loved — the Great Society.
— Attributed, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism (2007)
...there would be Robert Kennedy out in front leading the fight against me, telling everyone that I had betrayed John Kennedy's commitment to South Vietnam. That I had let a democracy fall into the hands of the communists. That I was a coward. An unmanly man. A man without a spine. Oh, I could see it coming, all right.
— On prolonging the Vietnam War (attributed by Doris Kearns Goodwin)
John, that son of a bitch [Bobby Baker] is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I'm going to land in jail...I practically raised that motherfucker, and now he's going to make me the first President of the United States to spend the last days of his life behind bars...I will give him a million dollars if he takes the rap.
— To lobbyist Robert Winter-berger, unaware that others were in the room
There is no room for injustice anywhere in the American mansion. But there is always room for understanding toward those who see the old ways crumbling. And to them, today, I simply say this: It must come. It is right that it should come. And when it has, you will find that a burden has been lifted from your shoulders, too.
— Voting Rights Act signing speech, August 6, 1965
Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked good...We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitution, he, his parliament and his constitution may not last long!
— To the Greek Ambassador, June 1964
Quotes about Lyndon Johnson
He was doomed from the beginning. After Kennedy, he was the wrong age, the wrong class, from the wrong region. I always thought the fact that he wasn’t a bogus Whig nobleman was a point in his favor — but his public manner gave offense, and I could never understand why, since his sort of folksy hypocrisy is the national style. But perhaps that was why: The people recognized themselves in him and recoiled. He was the snake-oil salesman, just as Nixon is the Midwestern realtor, gravely intent upon selling us that nice acre of development land called Shady Elms that turns out to be a swamp. We’re used to these types and prefer something grander as our chief of state, a superior con man, preferably of patrician origin, who can disguise with noble phrases who and what we are; to euphemize, that is the presidential task.
— Gore Vidal, Playboy interview, 1969
I think always that, with Johnson, the boyhood formed his character. Being poor in the Hill Country, humiliated, the son of the town's laughing stock-that fire was so hot that it formed him into a shape so hard it would never change. He has a hunger for power. He’s gotta get it. The first two books are really about him getting power. In the book I’m writing now, my third volume, he has power. He’s Majority Leader of the Senate, so you see him start doing wonderful things. Now in the part I just finished writing, 1957, he’s passing the first civil rights legislation since the Civil War. It’s an act of sheer genius, but the character of the man does not change...The B-52s used to fly so high that you couldn’t hear them from the ground, and in the villages that were obliterated the people didn’t even know the bombs were coming until they hit. You really want to show the effect of power on the powerless.
— Robert Caro, historian writing a five-book series on Johnson
The neoconservative movement that arose within the Democratic party was made up of intellectuals, scholars, and party stalwarts who had originally been strong supporters of the party’s New Deal traditions...In the late 1960s and 1970s these Democrats grew increasingly unhappy with the party’s drift toward the political left. They were uneasy with Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty program; they were then enraged when Democratic leaders embraced many of the causes of the youth counterculture of the 1960s, including opposition to the Vietnam War and support for affirmative action.
—James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet, 2004
Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson made a move that was unprecedented at the time and remains unmatched by succeeding administrations. He announced a War on Poverty, saying that its 'chief weapons' would be 'better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities' ...By the Reagan era, it had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology that poverty is caused not by low wages or a lack of jobs and education, but by the bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles of the poor.
—Barabara Ehrenreich, "It is Expensive to be Poor"
Hey! Hey! LBJ!
How many kids did you kill today?
How many kids did you kill today?
— Popular anti-Vietnam War protest chant
