Lyndon B. Johnson quotes - page 12
Nobody in this world can put on a political parade and a political rally like that great executive Dick Daley of Chicago. He makes it so much fun being a Democrat that you don't see how anybody could be anything else. I think he is one of the greatest political leaders in all the world.
Lyndon B. Johnson
I have come to New York in the final hours of this campaign. I come to say to you once again that your President will need your prayers and your President will need your support, and your President will also need Democratic Congressmen in the House and Bob Kennedy in the Senate. I don't have to tell you of Bob Kennedy's talents or his energy or his great patriotism. He has demonstrated this in ways and actions that are far beyond my inadequate description, but it seems to me--it seems to me that this great State, symbolizing America and its ancestors, ought to have, and deserves to have, at least one Democratic Senator. So help your country, help your President, help your State. Work hard, vote early, and send to Washington a full delegation of Democratic Congressmen and send Bob Kennedy to the Senate where he can continue to work with Hubert Humphrey and work with me for the people of New York.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Franklin Roosevelt once said, "Too many who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were. Democracy should concern itself also with things as they should be." So in this campaign we face those who are interested in destroying things as they are. These fellows are not conservatives in the American tradition. They are just interested in tearing down institutions, not in preserving them. They are dedicated to extreme ideas, not to old values. They advocate aggressive interference with other nations, not increased reliance on others to order their own affairs. This is not a conservative philosophy. This is not even a Republican philosophy. This is not a philosophy ever embraced by any major American leader. "Conservative" may be written on their banner and in their books, but "radical" is in their hearts.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Today we are at the edge of a new era of progress toward the American dream. It is an opportunity as large and as exciting as that granted to those who settled this continent. Our basic goal has not been changed, but the growth of our Nation, the progress of science and knowledge, the change in our way of life, makes it necessary to shape new tools to reach old goals. And by moving ahead only can we hope to preserve the values of the past.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Unworthy as I am of your honor, I deeply appreciate your generosity. The torch of John Kennedy that I picked up when he faltered I shall proudly carry on as long as I have the energy and the life to carry it. I am most grateful to B'nai B'rith and the .And-Defamation League. They have the gratitude of this Nation. In your half century of fighting discrimination you have never tired, you have never faltered, you have never lost faith in your cause and your cause has given faith to your Nation.
Lyndon B. Johnson
So, guided by the great ideals of this country, willing to work and dare to fulfill your dreams, there is really no limit to the expectations of your tomorrow. If you wish a sheltered and uneventful life, then you are living in the wrong generation. No one can promise you calm, or ease, or undisturbed comfort. But we can promise you this. We can promise enormous challenge and arduous struggle, hard labor and great danger. And with them we can promise you, finally, triumph--triumph over all the enemies of mankind.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The great leadership that is being given this State now by your Governor, one of the ablest chief executives and one of the soundest leaders that we have known, was made possible because when he came from Floresville without a dollar in his pocket, he got an NYA job at 17 cents an hour--and he is now the chief executive of what was once the largest State in the Union. So the opportunity is here if you have the will and the leadership and the determination. I could think of no better epithet, I could think of no greater sense of satisfaction or achievement that could come to anyone than to have it said of him that he led this way in this noble undertaking. I believe and I know that you and all of my fellow Americans will be equal to this task. So let's be on our way.
Lyndon B. Johnson
This center will reflect the finest artistic achievements of our time. It is our hope that it will house the leading artists and performers. Almost every industrialized nation in the world, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, has one or more national centers for the arts. Washington has lagged behind. Far too often, American actors and singers and musicians must travel to foreign countries to even be heard. Now, because of President Kennedy's leadership and your efforts, they will have a stage here in the Capital of their own country. I expect this center to be a living force for the encouragement of art. Washington needs new theaters and new concert halls. But if that is all that we are building, we will have fallen far short of today's expectation and promise.
Lyndon B. Johnson
I come here today to speak not to posterity but to your generation. In a new and changing world you receive the oldest trust of all. George Washington, in his first Inaugural Address, said: "The destiny of the republican model of government is justly considered... as deeply, as finally staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people." In the years since he spoke the great experiment has prospered. Where we once stood alone, today the sun never sets on free men, or on men struggling to be free. Even where dictators rule, they often find it necessary to use the language of the rights of man and sometimes find it necessary to modify other dictatorships. For our democracy has proven the most powerful secular idea in the history of man. But the record of success does not mean that we will continue to be successful. The spread of freedom does not guarantee freedom will continue to flourish. The fact we have grown does not mean we will continue to grow.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Your energy and your sacrifice are needed. It is our job to tap those resources, and to help provide the chance to serve. We have already begun. Thousands of volunteers are needed today for the Peace Corps--to bring hope and the ideals of freedom to the villages and towns of more than half the world. Thirteen thousand young Americans have already accepted this responsibility in 46 countries. In the next 4 years we hope to double the size of this effort. Five thousand VISTA volunteers are needed this year to enlist in the war against poverty. All our programs for Appalachia will not succeed without the work of individual volunteers that are filled with compassion for their fellows, and a willingness to serve their country. I am so glad that it seems to me that here at the crossroads of this great university is where education and Appalachia meet.
Lyndon B. Johnson
In our system, the first right and most vital of all our rights is the right to vote. Jefferson described the elective franchise as "the ark of our safety." It is from the exercise of this right that the guarantee of all our other rights flows. Unless the right to vote be secure and undenied, all other rights are insecure and subject to denial for all our citizens. The challenge to this right is a challenge to America itself. We must meet this challenge as decisively as we would meet a challenge mounted against our land from enemies abroad.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books-and I have helped to put three of them there - can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it.
In such a case our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.
In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?".
Lyndon B. Johnson
For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated, how many white families have lived in stark poverty, how many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we have wasted our energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror? So I say to all of you here, and to all in the Nation tonight, that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future. This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we shall over, come.
Lyndon B. Johnson
What we won when all of our people united just must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, selfishness, and politics among any of our people. Believing this as I do, I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office - the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
Lyndon B. Johnson