-
In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, '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.'
Lyndon B. Johnson -
There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans - not as Democrats or Republicans-we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.
Lyndon B. Johnson
-
Make no mistake about it. I don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise; we are going to win.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we affirmed through law that men equal under God are also equal when they seek a job, when they go to get a meal in a restaurant, or when they seek lodging for the night in any State in the Union.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
A people divided over the right to vote can never build a Nation united.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our Nation whole.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
I have always believed that freedom of information is so vital that only the national security, not the desire of public officials or private citizens, should determine when it must be restricted.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
In Selma as elsewhere we seek and pray for peace. We seek order. We seek unity. But we will not accept the peace of stifled rights, or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.
Lyndon B. Johnson
-
I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming-always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again-but always trying and always gaining.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best; that is all I can do. I ask for your help and God's.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
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. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
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.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
It is empty to plead that the solution to the dilemmas of the present rests on the hands of the clock. The solution is in our hands. Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans - white and Negro together - must be about the business of resolving the challenge which confronts us now.
Lyndon B. Johnson
-
The important thing is to end a conflict that has brought burdens to both our peoples, and above all to the people of South Viet-Nam. If you have any thoughts about the actions I propose , it would be most important that I receive them as soon as possible.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions - divisions which have all lasted too long. Its purpose is national, not regional.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hope for, President Truman worked for and President Kennedy died for.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
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.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
As to the site of the bilateral discussions I propose, there are several possibilities. We could, for example, have our representatives meet in Moscow where contacts have already occurred. They could meet in some other country such as Burma. You may have other arrangements or sites in mind, and I would try to meet your suggestions.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that 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
-
One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. The Negro today asks justice. We do not answer him - we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil - when we reply to the Negro by asking, 'Patience.'
Lyndon B. Johnson -
We are one nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens. This is the majesty and the meaning of this moment.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
The purposeful many need not and will not bow to the willful few.
Lyndon B. Johnson -
For at the real heart of battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the democratic process. Equality depends not on the force of arms or tear gas but upon the force of moral right; not on recourse to violence but on respect for law and order.
Lyndon B. Johnson