When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.
LYNDON B. JOHNSONA good president does with executive power what Pablo Picasso did with paint. He takes bills into new and slightly discomfiting territory. He puts extra eyes on policies. He moves the mouth of the Supreme Court from where it should be to where it must be.
More Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes
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I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy’s window, and say it smells like roses.
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The job, of course, will never be finished. For a nation, as for an individual, education is a perpetually unfinished journey, a continuing process of discovery.
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If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
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While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.
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Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath.
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All men are created equal’, ‘government by consent of the governed’, ‘give me liberty or give me death’. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.
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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.
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…International education cannot be the work of one country. It is the responsibility and promise of all nations. It calls for free exchange and full collaboration…The knowledge of our citizens is one treasure which grows only when it is shared.
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You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
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Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. He’s a nice fellow, but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet.
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You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON