The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.
— Lyndon B. Johnson
I am making a collection of the things my opponents have found me to be and, when this election is over, I am going to open a museum and put them on display.
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.
If the American people don't love me, their descendants will.
Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.
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.
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.
While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass.
We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.
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.
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.
It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention.
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.
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.
No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.
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.
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.
This is not Johnson's war. This is America's war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.
Whoever won't fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there.
The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.
The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.
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.
We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.
You aren't learning anything when you're talking.
A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
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.
Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.
A man without a vote is man without protection.
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.
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.
When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
You've got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you've got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.
Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!
I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You've got to just stand there and take it.
I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.
I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.
Every President wants to do right.
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.
Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right.
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.
I'm the only president you've got.
The noblest search is the search for excellence.
When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.
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.
I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.
