A President must call on many persons -- some to man the ramparts and to watch the far away, distant posts; others to lead us in science, medicine, education and social progress here at home.
If we become tow people-the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear of the other-then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come.
It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.
This nation, this generation, in this hour has man's first chance to build a Great Society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor.
If one little old general in shirt sleeves can take Saigon, think about 200 million Chinese comin' down those trails. No sir, I don't want to fight them.
It is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity.
I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.
True poverty does not come from God.
I'm gonna hunker down like a jack rabbit in a dust storm.
As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?
We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
If you have a mother-in-law with only one eye and she has it in the center of her forehead, don't keep her in the living room.
Second, this law has become a special symbol of our Nation's most important purpose: to fulfill the individual -- his freedom, his happiness, his promise.
For the first time in our history it is possible to conquer poverty.
Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance.
The United States and Israel share many common objectives ... chief of which is the building of a better world in which every nation can develop its resources and develop them in freedom and peace.
Curtis Le May wants to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong. You know how he likes to go around bombing.
You never want to give a man a present when he's feeling good. You want to do it when he's down.
When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled.
Boys, it is just like the Alamo. Somebody should have by God helped those Texans. I'm going to Vietnam.
The thing I would like to do most is to find somehow to bring peace to the world. It has eluded me.
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.
There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.
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.
Whoever won't fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there.
I report to you that our country is challenged at home and abroad: that it is our will that is being tried and not our strength; our sense of purpose and not our ability to achieve a better America.
Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
When things haven't gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention.
When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.
Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.
I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.
In our home there was always prayer -- aloud, proud and unapologetic.
I don't believe I'll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn't go to Harvard.
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.
While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass.
I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.
I'd rather give my life than be afraid to give it.
Every President wants to do right.
The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.
Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.
I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help -- and God's.
We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.
It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I'm a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can't be too small to suit me.
I believe the destiny of your generation -- and your nation -- is a rendezvous with excellence.
Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.
This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.
Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.
The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business.
The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.
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.
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'
Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right.
When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.
John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.
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.
When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.
Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.
There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.
To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts.
Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don't think the press has understood me.
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.
A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he's going to get sick on it.
You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.
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.
A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.
Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.
Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.