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Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.Lyndon B. Johnson
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If we stand passively by while the centre of each city becomes a hive of depravation, crime and hopelessness…if we become two people, the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear for the other…then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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Emancipation was a proclamation, but not a fact.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Already a congressman, to a mentor "I hope sometime you run across something you think I can do well 24 hours per day.Lyndon B. Johnson
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We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences - deep, corrosive, obstinate differences - radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.Lyndon B. Johnson
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This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.Lyndon B. Johnson
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[T]he 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.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean! "In 1966 upon being told that President Charles DeGaulle had taken France out of NATO and that all U.S. troops must be evacuated off of French soil President Lyndon Johnson mentioned to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he should ask DeGaulle about the Americans buried in France. Dean implied in his answer that that DeGaulle should not really be asked that in the meeting at which point President Johnson then told Secretary of State Dean Rusk:"Ask him about the cemeteries Dean! "That made it into a Presidential Order so he had to ask President DeGaulle.So at end of the meeting Dean did ask DeGaulle if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil also included the 60, 000+ soldiers buried in France from World War I and World War II.DeGaulle, embarrassed, got up and left and never answered. .Lyndon B. Johnson
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Doing what is right isn't the problem it's knowing what is right.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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I'd rather give my life than be afraid to give it.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can.... Have I done enough?Lyndon B. Johnson
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Doing what's right isn't the problem. It's knowing what's right.Lyndon B. Johnson
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There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress and that is continuously incessantly and without interruption. If it's really going to work the relationship between the president and the Congress has got to be almost incestuous.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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 to let her have it.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Yesterday is not ours to recover but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.Lyndon B. Johnson
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While you're saving your face you're losing your ass. Never trust a man whose eyes are too close to his nose. I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket. Better inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.Lyndon B. Johnson
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The world has narrowed to a neighbourhood before it has broadened to a brotherhood.Lyndon B. Johnson
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A president's hardest task is not to do what's right but to know what's right.Lyndon B. Johnson
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The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business.Lyndon B. Johnson
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This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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.Lyndon B. Johnson
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The moon and other celestial bodies should be free for exploration and use by all countries. No country should be permitted to advance a claim of sovereignty.Lyndon B. Johnson
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The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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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
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We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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You aren't learning anything when you're talking.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.Lyndon B. Johnson
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I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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.Lyndon B. Johnson
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I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.Lyndon B. Johnson
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The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.Lyndon B. Johnson
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The noblest search is the search for excellence.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.Lyndon B. Johnson
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One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President.Lyndon B. Johnson
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I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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
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Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.Lyndon B. Johnson
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There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.Lyndon B. Johnson
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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.Lyndon B. Johnson
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In our home there was always prayer - aloud, proud and unapologetic.Lyndon B. Johnson
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We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.Lyndon B. Johnson
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I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.Lyndon B. Johnson
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Freedom is not enough.Lyndon B. Johnson