Lyndon B. Johnson quotes: 36th President’s powerful quotes.
“For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground.”
“The test before us as a people is not whether our commitments match our will and our courage; but whether we have the will and courage to match our commitments.”
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”
“We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.”
“In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change.”
“We must change to master change.”
“What convinces is conviction.”
“There’s something special for everyone to do. Remember, no experience is a bad experience unless you gain nothing from it.”
“You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.”
“You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.”
“The noblest search is the search for excellence.”
“The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.”
“It is the excitement of becoming – always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again – but always trying and always gaining.”
“It’s the price of leadership to do the thing you believe has to be done at the time it must be done.”
“Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject itself, or know where to find it.”
“Faith builds; cynicism destroys.”
“The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing. For, though in every age there are some who, by bold adventures, or by favorable accidents, rise suddenly to riches, yet it is dangerous to indulge hopes of such rare events; and the bulk of mankind must owe their affluence to small and gradual profits, below which their expense must be resolutely reduced.”
“There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.”
“Today our problem is not making miracles, but managing them.”
“There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: deny your responsibility.”
“Four. That’s what I want you to remember. If you don’t get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won’t do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters: home, love, food, land, peace… I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.”
“I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy’s window, and say it smells like roses.”
“Watch their hands, watch their eyes. Read eyes. No matter what a man is saying to you, it’s not as important as what you can read in his eyes. The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he’s not telling you; the most important thing he has to say is what he’s trying not to say.”
“Heck, by the time a man scratches his behind, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we’ve already wasted 15 minutes.”
“Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”
“If we must disagree, let’s disagree without being disagreeable.”
“I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.”
“Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement.”
“The job, of course, will never be finished. For a nation, as for an individual, education is a perpetually unfinished journey, a continuing process of discovery.”
“Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.”
“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.”
“We must open the doors of opportunity.”
“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. We seek not just freedom, but opportunity; not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.”
“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. 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.”
“Every man, everywhere, should be free to develop his talents to their full potential – unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income.”
“We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.”
“If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.”
“If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.”
“Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.”
“We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.”
“I am proud to be a member of a party that opens its doors to all men – and closes its hearts to none.”
“I don’t believe in labels. I want to do the best I can, all the time. I want to be progressive without getting both feet off the ground at the same time. I want to be prudent without having my mind closed to anything that is new or different.”
“Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep, I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can? Have I done enough?”
“I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it.”
“I’m a powerful S.O.B., you know that?”
Next, Bill Clinton’s quotes.
