103 Best Lyndon B Johnson Quotes That You Must Read

Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, was sworn into office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Known for his vision to create “A Great Society,” Johnson orchestrated one of the most extensive legislative programs in U.S. history, seeking to restrain Communist encroachment in Vietnam.

Born into rural poverty in Texas in 1908, Johnson’s compassion for the less fortunate was nurtured through his early experiences as an educator.

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After serving briefly in the Navy during World War II, Lyndon Johnson held six terms in the House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 1948.

He quickly rose to Majority Leader, pushing through key Eisenhower measures.

As President, he enacted significant civil rights and tax reforms, Medicare and the Great Society program focusing on education, urban renewal and poverty.

Despite these accomplishments, Johnson’s term was marred by civil unrest and the Vietnam War.

Related: Sharice Davids Quotes from the American Politician and Sam Rayburn Quotes from American Politician and Speaker

He did not seek re-election in 1968, dedicating his time to peace negotiations. Johnson died in 1973, remembered for his expansive legislative legacy.

I have made a top list of quotes from Lyndon Johnson for you.


Best Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

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You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Success only feeds the appetite of aggression. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean! ~ Lyndon Baines Johnson.

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Nothing comes free. Nothing. Not even good, especially not good. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

We must change to master change. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

There’s America, there’s the South, and then there’s Mississippi. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources – because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Famous Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

What convinces is conviction. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

New laboratories and centers will help our schools lift their standards of excellence and explore new methods of teaching. These centers will provide special training for those who need and deserve special treatment. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The family is the cornerstone of our society. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Of those to whom much is given, much is asked. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The best fertilizer for a piece of land is the footprints of its owner. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

It is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

A man without a vote is a man without protection. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

No national sovereignty rules in outer space. Those who venture there go as envoys of the entire human race. Their quest, therefore, must be for all mankind, and what they find should belong to all mankind. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

If we must disagree, let’s disagree without being disagreeable. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Ultimate Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

There’s something special for everyone to do. Remember, no experience is a bad experience unless you gain nothing from it. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Hug your friends tight, but your enemies tighter – hug ’em so tight they can’t wiggle. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I’m gonna hunker down like a jack rabbit in a dust storm. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The thing I would like to do most is to find somehow to bring peace to the world. It has eluded me. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can’t Swim.’ ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Every child must be encouraged to get as much education as he has the ability to take. We want this not only for his sake – but for the nation’s sake. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Education will not cure all the problems of society, but without it no cure for any problem is possible. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I will not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Top Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The noblest search is the search for excellence. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The separation of church and state is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I am a compromiser and maneuverer. I try to get something. That’s the way our system works. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Great Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

For the primary and secondary school years, we will aid public schools serving low-income families and assist students in both public and private schools. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help – and God’s. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The American West is just arriving at the threshold of its greatness and growth. Where the West of yesterday is glamorized in our fiction, the future of the American West now is both fabulous and factual. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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Come now – let us reason together. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I’m the only president you’ve got. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

America has not always been kind to its artists and scholars. Somehow the scientists always seem to get the penthouse while the arts and humanities get the basement. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Light at the end of the tunnel? We don’t even have a tunnel; we don’t even know where the tunnel is. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I’m tired. I’m tired of feeling rejected by the American people. I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the war. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Wise Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

A clear stream, a long horizon, a forest wilderness and open sky – these are man’s most ancient possessions. In a modern society, they are his most priceless. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Everything I want to work for, as your President, to achieve peace, to conquer poverty, to build a worthy civilization – all of these depend in a very large degree on what happens in this school and what happens in other schools throughout our land. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

You let a bully come into your front yard, and the next day he’ll be on your porch. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Every citizen, regardless of his race, creed, or color, is entitled to equal justice. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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 the world. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Once we considered education a public expense; we know now that it is a public investment. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Emancipation was a proclamation, but not a fact. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Doing the right thing is not the problem. Knowing what the right thing is, that’s the challenge. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Control of space means control of the world. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Unique Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

I want every family in America to have a carpet on the floor and a picture on the wall. After bread, you’ve got to have a picture on the wall. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Education is the key to opportunity in our society, and the equality of educational opportunity must be the birthright of every citizen. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The classroom – not the trench – is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

If you’re not listening, you’re not learning. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we’ll have to fight in San Francisco. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Not merely a nation but a nation of nations. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Republicans simply don’t know how to manage the economy. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

Guns and bombs, rockets and warships, are all symbols of human failure. ~ Lyndon B Johnson.

Voting is the first duty of democracy. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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Power is where power goes. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.

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. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson.


So these were the 103 top Lyndon B Johnson quotes and sayings on civil rights and government.

If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on George Washington quotes and John Dewey quotes.

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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar