Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

America would be a better place if leaders would do more long-term thinking.

I want to do transformational work to actually fix the world.

If we do not make tough decisions now, future Americans will have to make even tougher ones.

In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.

The problem with holistic management is it's so profoundly simple, but it's not easy. And it's profoundly simple. You're almost insulting people's intelligence to explain it twice, just about making better decisions of where you want to go in your life, bringing in environmental, social, economic issues simultaneously.

When people align around shared political, social, economic or environmental values, and take collective action, thinking and behavior that compromises the lives of millions of people around the world can truly change.

When you're talking with a person at this level of the government, at the very highest level, I think you have to be very discreet because he, President Clinton, is very aware that anything he says publicly can have a profound impact on American politics and on world politics.

Ironically enough, why I got into politics is because I came to the conclusion that if you wanted to save the world, which in my mind was through the environment, those elected officials seemed to be the ones who made a lot of the important decisions, if not the most important decisions.

Hurry, conscious younger people! Get to power quickly so political decisions can be based on the greater good for all rather than the greater gain for few. Hurry, before it is too late!

We all have an obligation to move beyond anecdotes.

Well Mr. President, it isn’t quite as simple as that.

The test of the rightfulness of our decisions must be whether we have sustained and advanced ... prosperity.

The bloke who ends up sitting in the White House partially controls what we [the British] get up to.

It is the President alone who must make the major decisions of our foreign policy.

No American President should ever take any option off the table.

All recent U.S. presidents have learned the hard way that, despite their immense power, they remain at the mercy of uncontrollable global forces that render their personal views and campaign promises largely irrelevant.

No President is going to say, “I am not going to preempt.” This is simply a reality.

The Declaration of War function is corrupted if the President is the only source of information about the issue…

Good or bad, political choices have an impact on the way country’s behave.

For an American President, setting markers and not following through runs through the international community like a virus.

I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have the sense to do without my persuading them. That's all the powers of the President amount to.

I went in with the youthful vigor that I could single-handedly change the world. But you fast come to the realization that you're 1/435th of one-half of one-third of the government.

Instead of trying to change people, we could change the world.

The American president isn't just the American president. He's going to be the leader of the whole Western world, you know? You got a pretty big responsibility.

There is no quick technical fix for a social problem.