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date: 03 October 2024

Lyndon Baines Johnson 1908–73
American Democratic statesman, 36th President 1963–9 

  1. I am a free man, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.
    in Texas Quarterly Winter 1958
  2. All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.
    following the assassination of J. F. Kennedy
    first speech to Congress as President, 27 November 1963
  3. We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.
    speech to Congress, 27 November 1963
  4. We hope that the world will not narrow into a neighbourhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
    speech at the lighting of the Nation's Christmas Tree, 22 December 1963
  5. In your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
    speech at University of Michigan, 22 May 1964
  6. We still seek no wider war.
    speech on radio and television, 4 August 1964, in Public Papers of…Lyndon B. Johnson 1963–64 vol. 2
  7. We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
    speech at Akron University, 21 October 1964; see Roosevelt
  8. If I've lost Walter Cronkite I've lost Mr Average Citizen.
    in 1968, after hearing Walter Cronkite's comment on the position in Vietnam (now often quoted as ‘…I've lost the country’); see Cronkite
    to his press secretary George Christian; reported in D. Halberstam The Powers That Be (1979)
  9. I don't want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket.
    discussing a prospective assistant
    David Halberstam The Best and the Brightest (1972) ch. 20
  10. Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.
    of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI
    David Halberstam The Best and the Brightest (1972) ch. 20
  11. So dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.
    of Gerald Ford
    Richard Reeves A Ford, not a Lincoln (1975) ch. 2