Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

At times we used questionable means to achieve our noble ends.

Many people were grateful that President Johnson had not had hemorrhoid surgery.

LBJ’s policies were giving American blacks hope they’d never had, they found intolerable what they had once accepted as inevitable.

If Obama succeeds in turning health insurance and funding for college into universal entitlements, he will have expanded Washington's obligations on the scale of an LBJ or an FDR.

I had been in so many towns and cities in America with John Kennedy, but I was not with him in Dallas, Texas, on November 21, 1963.

Medicare is a promise we made to seniors more than four decades ago. When President Johnson signed Medicare into law, one in three seniors lived in poverty. Half of seniors had no health coverage at all.

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.

I don't understand it, how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam and cannot send troops to Selma, Alabama, to protect people whose only desire is to register to vote.

This is the most progressive Administration in the civil rights field in history, and you're going to quit over that? I want the Johnson Administration to practice what it preaches.

I first came on the scene during the Johnson years and that crowd was out all the time enjoying themselves. Nixon wasn't particularly social but a lot of the people in his administration were.

In my years working in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, I had learned that those who seek the presidency are prepared to stop at almost nothing to get their party’s nomination.

I don’t see how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam …, and he can’t send troops to Selma Alabama.

When [Lyndon B.] Johnson wanted to persuade you of something, when you got the "Johnson treatment," you really felt as if a St. Bernard had licked your face for an hour, had pawed you all over.

I was in Independence, Missouri when Johnson signed the Medicare bill, with Truman standing there. Truman had first proposed Medicare, but couldn't get it through.

The Vietnam War soured President Johnson's legacy. We still have to recognize his domestic legacy.

But we look back now, and we realize the Great Society was not a success.

I talked to the rest of the nation for about ten minutes about what Lyndon Johnson was doing for the people of the Northeast. In truth, I thought I was laying it on a bit thickly. But when I returned and spoke with the President, he mentioned several points I could have added. I learned that it was simply not possible to lay it on too thickly for him (or most other politicians).

Don't forget the Vietnam War was brought to us by Democrats.

In my case, I was covering politics in Texas as a newspaper man in the 1960's.

Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson's legislative success on civil rights.

The pilot came back and said he had just heard that Kennedy was shot.

It's not just Barack Obama, but I doubt Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton would have made it to the White House without Selma.

I was introduced to Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson. The young Congressman was very friendly.

Johnson showed me how important it was to use every hour of every day to shape national policy while we had the power to do so.

The first president I met was L. B. J.