Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy!

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Education is not just another consumer item. It is the bedrock of our democracy.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

O people of America. The destinies of your country are in your own hands. They are committed to your own keeping. It is for you to say which ye will have, liberty or slavery, knowledge or ignorance, happiness or misery.

Education, then, as universally diffused as the elements of God, is the life-blood of our body politic. The intelligence of the people is the one great fact of our civilization and our prosperity, — it is the beating heart of our age and of our land. It is education alone which makes equality possible without anarchy, and liberty without license.

Democracy depends on well educated and engaged citizens.

The ultimate victory of tomorrow is democracy, and through democracy with education, for no people in all the world can be kept eternally ignorant or eternally enslaved.

We... are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant.

Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

You need a certain standard of literacy, moral and ethical values, to be able to run a one man, one vote system.

Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

I feel it's a person's duty to participate in the governing of the country in which he lives.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.