Lyndon Baines Johnson Quotes

Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.

Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean!

The 1960s: A lot of people remember hating President Lyndon Baines Johnson and loving Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, depending on the point of view. God rest their souls.

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.

He’s [Nixon] like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards. You’ll see; he’ll do something wrong in the end. He always does.

You know, a man ain't worth a damn if he can't cry at the right time.

In the twentieth century, with its eighteen American presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson was the greatest champion that black Americans and Mexican-Americans and indeed all Americans of color had in the White House, the greatest champion they had in all the halls of government. With the single exception of Lincoln, he was the greatest champion with a white skin that they had in the history of the Republic. He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those to whom social justice had so long been denied, the restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed to be given some dignity, the redeemer of the promises made to them by America. He was to be the President who, above all Presidents save Lincoln, codified compassion, the President who wrote mercy and justice into the statute books by which America was governed.

He [Lyndon Baines Johnson]turned out to be so many different characters he could have populated all of War and Peace and still had a few people left over.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” Texas senator Lyndon Baines Johnson was

President Lyndon Baines Johnson once argued, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

America’s last step into the Vietnam quagmire came on November 22, 1963, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. Unlike Kennedy, Johnson was no real veteran. During World War II he used his influence as a congressman to become a naval officer, and, despite an utter lack of military training, he arranged a direct commission as a lieutenant commander. Fully aware that “combat” exposure would make him more electable, the ambitious Johnson managed an appointment to an observation team that was traveling to the Pacific. Once there, he was able to get a seat on a B-26 combat mission near New Guinea. The bomber had to turn back due to mechanical problems and briefly came under attack from Japanese fighters. The pilot got the damaged plane safely back to its base and Johnson left the very next day. This nonevent, which LBJ had absolutely no active part of, turned into his war story. The engine had been “knocked out” by enemy fighters, not simply a routine malfunction; he, LBJ, had been part of a “suicide mission,” not just riding along as baggage. The fabrication grew over time, including, according to LBJ, the nickname of “Raider” Johnson given to him by the awestruck 22nd Bomber Group.

contretemps.

solons

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

That campaign raises, in fact, one of the greatest issues invoked by the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson; the relationship between means and ends. Many of the ends of Lyndon Johnson’s life, civil rights, in particular, perhaps, but others too, were noble. Heroic advances in the cause of social justice....Those noble ends would not have been possible without the means, far from noble, that brought Johnson to power...To what extent are ends inseparable from means?

Defeat: The Liberal Way of War After studying hundreds of books written by liberals about the Vietnam War, you realize that their prime objection to this war, waged by liberal presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson, was that it was just too hard to win. They never stepped back and recognized that what made it hard to win was fighting it the liberal way of limited war where you tell the enemy your limits;

In 1954, then-Senator (later Vice President, then President) Lyndon Baines Johnson wrote a piece of legislation, the Johnson Amendment, which would go a long way to silence the churches and synagogues who were not yet asleep at the switch. He would threaten the clergy with a response from the Internal Revenue Service if they were to take up social and political issues from their pulpits. This law, or threat, still stands today, and anyone holding a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the United States government knows that it has teeth that will bite hard should you test its veracity. The action taken by LBJ has effectively removed the voice of righteousness from the marketplace, and essentially it enables government to operate without a conscience.

And despite promising “everything I’ve got,” President Obama either did not know how, or chose not, to use the persuasive powers of the presidency, à la Lyndon Baines Johnson, to force them to act.11

Even as he took firm and reassuring command of the federal government, Johnson began to recast the civil rights struggle from a legal question to a ringing moral issue.* With a credibility that no northerner could claim, Johnson took his case for equal rights directly to the South.

In the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s presidency and assassination, something called the New Left emerged in American politics. Much like Bernie’s following, the new left found its strength on college campuses across the United States. Organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) populated the movement. Meanwhile, in Washington, Lyndon Baines Johnson, perhaps to provide cover for his failing war in Vietnam, tried to appease the New Left by ushering through a socialist agenda. Among the programs he supported were food stamps in 1964, Medicaid in 1965, and the Gun Control Act of 1968. By the early 1970s, the hippies of the New Left had traded their peace signs for raised fists and terrorist organizations. Among them was the Weather Underground, which was responsible for more than two thousand domestic bombings. The Weather Underground’s manifesto, called Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism, is dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s assassin.

three years, John F. Kennedy enjoyed a relatively quiet presidency, with no major roadblocks. With Lyndon Baines. Johnson (LBJ) as a supposedly loyal Vice-President, JFK grew complacent.

JFK Assassination The general premise of the situation is that President John F. Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Shots rang out, and the resulting barrage of bullets ended with the President being fatally shot in the head. An event that was caught on tape by the famous film shot by Abraham Zapruder. [1] The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was caught the same day after shooting a Dallas police officer. Two days later, he was killed, again on camera, by Jack Ruby with one shot to the abdomen. The new President, former Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, put together the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination. They concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and closed the book on the case. This conclusion meant that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine with questionable marksman skills using an archaic bolt-action rifle, would have to fire 3 shots within 8 to 11 seconds. It required that he aim and fire at a moving target, pull back the bolt to release the shell, and then aim and fire again. He would aim and fire one more time before it was over, but was he the only one firing? This wasn't good enough for the American people, and the case was revisited with a new investigation in 1978. The House Select Committee on Assassinations simply concluded that the killing was the result of a conspiracy, and that was it. For 50+ years, we have been left to theorize and hypothesize about what happened in Dealey Plaza that day. A new idea was presented to the public on the 50th anniversary of the event in November 2013 that theorized the final shot that exploded Kennedy's head was accidental. This idea theorized that the shot came from a Secret Service agent in the follow-up vehicle. The agent had retrieved an assault rifle from the floorboard of the limo, and when the vehicle lunged, he fired the fatal shot. This action was followed by an extensive cover-up to save the agency from public embarrassment. I don't think we will ever know what really happened that day. [2]

El 22 de noviembre de 1963, viajando con su mujer en un coche descapotable, fue tiroteado y asesinado en Dallas, Texas. La muerte de Kennedy no sólo impresionó y entristeció a los norteamericanos. Era como una metáfora. La esperanza, la juventud, el compromiso, habían sido violentamente arrancados. Pero como establecía la Constitución, el mandato de Kennedy continuaría sin interrupción. Sólo 90 minutos después del asesinato de John F. Kennedy su vicepresidente, Lyndon Baines Johnson, juraba, a bordo del avión presidencial, el cargo de presidente de Estados Unidos de América. Lo hacía flanqueado a su izquierda por la joven viuda, Jacquie Kennedy, y a su derecha por su mujer, Claudia.

You know, a man ain’t worth a damn if he can’t cry at the right time.

On the eve of the JFK assassination, the political future of Lyndon Baines Johnson was imperiled. Bobby Baker, LBJ’s protégé and bagman, was under investigation by the Kennedy Justice Department for myriad crimes including tax evasion, fraud, and the procuring of congressional votes through sexual favors.

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Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had dreamed of the presidency since the earliest days of his career, who had toiled in that same Texas soil as a dirt-poor boy from the hill country, had officially been commander in chief for nine minutes. Jackie Kennedy would never return to Dallas—her first trip there would be her last.

In a November 13, 1988, Washington Post opinion piece titled “What a Real President Was Like,” Bill Moyers noted that in 1960 in Tennessee after a meeting with local dignitaries, then-Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson said something that rings so true this day: “If you can convince the lowest White man he’s better than the best Colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

in 1960 in Tennessee after a meeting with local dignitaries, then-Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson said something that rings so true this day: “If you can convince the lowest White man he’s better than the best Colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody