Lyndon B. Johnson citations (153 citations, Page 3)

Special message to the Congress on the nation's cities (March 2, 1965); reported in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965, book 1, p. 240.
1960s

“I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people's right to know is cherished and guarded.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, Statement on the Freedom of Information Act (1966)

“Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

“Make no mistake about it. I don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise; we are going to win.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

Remarks at a Meeting of the National Alliance of Businessmen (16 March 1968). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28740
1960s

“In the world, America stands for — and works for — the right of all men to govern themselves through free, uninhibited elections. An ink bottle broken against an American Embassy, a fire set in an American library, an insult committed against our American flag, anywhere in the world, does far less injury to our country and our cause than the discriminatory denial of the right of any American citizen at home to vote on the basis of race or color.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

“You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe you have been completely fair… This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

LBJ in the Commencement Address at Howard University http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/sources/ps_bakke.html on June 4, 1965 on affirmative action.
1960s

“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, Memorial Day speech (1963)

“When anyone says he’s a country boy, put your hand on your wallet.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

While Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said this (or a variation), it was not original to him. See barrypopik.com http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/when_anyone_says_hes_a_country_boy_you_better_put_your_hand_on_your_wallet and Texas, A Modern History: Revised Edition https://books.google.com/books?id=WQNo7e3jjysC&pg=PA215#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Misattributed

“Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, members of the House and the Senate, my fellow Americans. I come before you tonight to report on the State of the Union for the third time. I come here to thank you and to add my tribute, once more, to the nation's gratitude for this, the 89th Congress. This Congress has already reserved for itself an honored chapter in the history of America. Our nation tonight is engaged in a brutal and bitter conflict in Vietnam. Later on I want to discuss that struggle in some detail with you. It just must be the center of our concerns. But we will not permit those who fire upon us in Vietnam to win a victory over the desires and the intentions of all the American people. This nation is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home. And that is what I have come here to ask of you tonight.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

“This law covers many pages. But the heart of the act is plain. Wherever, by clear and objective standards, States and counties are using regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote, then they will be struck down. If it is dear that State officials still intend to discriminate, then Federal examiners will be sent in to register all eligible voters. When the prospect of discrimination is gone, the examiners will be immediately withdrawn. And, under this act, if any county anywhere in this Nation does not want Federal intervention it need only open its polling places to all of its people.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)

“In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

“I am so proud of our system of government, of our free enterprise, where our incentive system and our men who head our big industries are willing to get up at daylight and work until midnight to offer employment and create new jobs for people, where our men working there will try to get decent wages but will sit across the table and not act like cannibals, but will negotiate and reason things out together.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

"Transcript of Television and Radio Interview Conducted by Representatives of Major Broadcast Services.," http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=26108 March 15, 1964. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
1960s

“As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great president of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact. A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

“With these problems in mind, I am prepared to move even further towards an ending of hostilities than your Government has proposed in either public statements or through private diplomatic channels. I am prepared to order a cessation of bombing against your country and the stopping of further augmentation of U. S. forces in South Viet-Nam as soon as I am assured that infiltration into South Viet-Nam by land and by sea has stopped. These acts of restraint on both sides would, I believe, make it possible for us to conduct serious and private discussions leading toward an early peace.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, Letter to Ho Chi Minh (1967)

“Therefore, I believe that we both have a heavy obligation to seek earnestly the path to peace. It is in response to that obligation that I am writing directly to you.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, Letter to Ho Chi Minh (1967)

“Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says, in Latin: 'God has favored our undertaking.' God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

“Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ambassador Goldberg, distinguished Members of the leadership of the Congress, distinguished Governors and mayors, my fellow countrymen. We have called the Congress here this afternoon not only to mark a very historic occasion, but to settle a very old issue that is in dispute. That issue is, to what congressional district does Liberty Island really belong; Congressman Farbstein or Congressman Gallagher? It will be settled by whoever of the two can walk first to the top of the Statue of Liberty. This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power. Yet it is still one of the most important acts of this Congress and of this administration. For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice. It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation. Speaker McCormack and Congressman Celler almost 40 years ago first pointed that out in their maiden speeches in the Congress. And this measure that we will sign today will really make us truer to ourselves both as a country and as a people. It will strengthen us in a hundred unseen ways.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

“How many men who listen to me tonight have served their nation in other wars? How very many are not here to listen? The war in Vietnam is not like these other wars. Yet, finally, war is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in this world.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

“We know that most people's intentions are good. We don't question their motives; we've never said they're unpatriotic, although they say some pretty ugly things about us. And we believe very strongly on preserving the right to differ in this country, and the right to dissent; and if I have done a good job of anything since I've been president, it's to ensure that there are plenty of dissenters.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

Statement (17 November 1967), as quoted in Vietnam: A Television History (1983) "Homefront USA" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/series/pt_10.html
1960s

“Our government is united in its determination to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

Report on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx8-ffiYyzA (4 August 1964)
1960s

“This civil rights program about which you have heard so much is a farce and a sham; an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I fought it in the Congress. It is the province of the state to run its own elections. I am opposed to the anti-lynching bill because the federal government has no business enacting a law against one kind of murder than another … If a man can tell you who you must hire, he can tell you who not to employ. I have met this head on.”

Help us translate this quote

Lyndon B. Johnson

Speech in Austin, Texas http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/190562-best-and-worst-president-of-the-century/page__st__20 (22 May 1948), as quoted in Quotations from Chairman LBJ http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/190562-best-and-worst-president-of-the-century/page__st__20 (1968), New York: Simon and Schuster.
1940s