The quotations of

Lyndon B. Johnson

President of the United States from 1963 to 1969

1908–1973

20 quotes, most often on America, Race and Voting. Part of the U.S. Presidents collection.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can’t Swim.’
Often credited to Margaret Thatcher
- Clever Jabs
- Journalism
Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but stand there and take it.
- Presidency
It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.
On FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as quoted in The New York Times (31 October 1971)
- Politics
Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.
The Great Society (May 22, 1964)
- Education
We are one nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens. This is the majesty and the meaning of this moment.
Inaugural address (January 1965)
- America
I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle.
(28 July 1965)
- War & Peace
- Youth
Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.
We Shall Overcome (1965)
- America
- Justice
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.
We Shall Overcome (1965)
- Freedom
- History
Throughout my entire public career I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant, and a member of my party, in that order always and only.
Address to the nation announcing he would not seek re-election (31 March 1968)
- America
- Politics
This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.
Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)
- Voting
We will serve all the Nation, not one section or one sector, or one group, but all Americans. These are the United States-a united people with a united purpose.
Let Us Continue (JFK Assassination) (1963)
- America
Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot. But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice and fulfillment.
Remarks on signing the Voting Rights Act (6 August 1965)
- Race
- Voting
Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.
We Shall Overcome (1965)
- America
- Voting
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.
Speech in Austin, Texas (22 May 1948), as quoted in Quotations from Chairman LBJ (1968)
- Politics
- Race
A people divided over the right to vote can never build a Nation united.
Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)
- America
- Voting

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