Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908–January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was an American politician. After serving a long career in U.S. legislatures, Johnson became the Vice President under John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) and later succeeded to the 36th Presidency (1963–1969) after Kennedy's assassination. [1]

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"At times history fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have the right to vote...Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes... No law that we now have on the books...can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it... There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights."
- Introducing the Voting Rights Act to Congress on March 15, 1965 [2]
- Notes: introducing the Voting Rights Act to Congress

"… I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
- May 31, 1968 "October surprise" address to the nation [3]

"Education is equipping our children to walk through doors of opportunity."
"Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in."
- on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
"Don't spit in the soup. We've all got to eat."
- when he was U. S. Senate majority leader
"Fuck your parliament and your constitution."
- to the Greek ambassador when he objected to American plans in Cyprus
"I never trust a man till I have his pecker in my pocket."
"I seldom think of politics more than 18 hours a day."
"If two men agree on everything, you can be sure one of them is doing the thinking."
"We learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite for aggression."
"You’re asking the leader of the Western world a chickenshit question like that?"
"We have just lost the South for a generation."
- To an aide, upon having signed the Civil Rights Act.
"Frank, are you trying to fuck me?...Your boys just shat on the American flag."
- To CBS president Frank Wise, upon watching a CBS news account of U.S. Marines torching a Vietnamese village.
"I knew he wasn't an American."
- On Canadian-born reporter Morley Safer, who gave the aforementioned CBS report.
"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."
- Having seen a report by Walter Cronkite that concluded that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. He dropped out of the 1968 Presidential Race the following month.