Great Throughts Treasury

"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."

"I hope that you of the IPA will go out into the hinterland and rouse the masses and blow the bugles and tell them that the hour has arrived and their day is here; that we are on the march against the ancient enemies and we are going to be successful."

"I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad."

"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 pray we are still a young and courageous nation, that we have not grown so old and so fat and so prosperous that all we can think about is to sit back with our arms around our money bags. If we choose to do that I have no doubt that the smoldering fires will burst into flame and consume us -- dollars and all."

"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."

"I seldom think of politics more than 18 hours a day."

"I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American."

"I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

"I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people's right to know is cherished and guarded."

"I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women."

"I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women. (On appointing 10 women to top government positions)"

"I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help ? and God's."

"I won't have you electioneering on my doorstep. Every time you get in trouble in Parliament you run over here with your shirttail hanging out."

"I'd rather give my life than be afraid to give it."

"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'"

"If the American people don't love me, their descendants will."

"If the circumstances make it such that you can't fuck a man in the ass, then just peckerslap him. Better to let him know who's in charge than to let him think he's got the keys to the car."

"If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking."

"If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco."

"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."

"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."

"If you let a bully come in your front yard, he'll be on your porch the next day and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed."

"If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work."

"If you've got 'em by the balls, their heart and mind will follow."

"I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years. [Touting his underlying intentions for the Great Society programs, LBJ confided with two like-minded governors on Air Force One]"

"I'm the only president you've got."

"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."

"In 1787, the Continental Congress declared in the Northwest Ordinance: 'schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.'"

"In 1838, Mirabeau B. Lamar, the Second President of the Republic of Texas and the Father of Texas education, declared: 'The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.'"

"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.""

"In Asia we face an ambitious and aggressive China, but we have the will and we have the strength to help our Asian friends resist that ambition. Sometimes our folks get a little impatient. Sometimes they rattle their rockets some and they bluff about their bombs. But we are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."

"In our home there was always prayer - aloud, proud and unapologetic."

"In our system, the first right and most vital of all our fights is the right to vote. Jefferson described the elective franchise as "the ark of our safety." It is from the exercise of this right that the guarantee of all our other rights flows. Unless the right to vote be secure and undenied, all other rights are insecure and subject to denial for all our citizens. The challenge to this right is a challenge to America itself. We must meet this challenge as decisively as we would meet a challenge mounted against our land from enemies abroad."

"In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?""

"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."

"In the Great Society, work shall be an outlet for mans interests and desires. Each individual shall have full opportunity to use his capacities in employment which satisfies personally and contributes generally to the quality of the Nations life."

"In the last few decades entire new categories of waste have come to plague and menace the American scene. Pollution is growing at a rapid rate. Pollution destroys beauty and menaces health. It cuts down on efficiency, reduces property values and raises taxes. Almost all these wastes and pollutions are the result of activities carried on for the benefit of man. A prime national goal must be an environment that is pleasing to the senses and healthy to live in. Our Government is already doing much in this field. We have made significant progress. But more must be done."

"In the world, America stands for--and works for--the right of all men to govern themselves through free, uninhibited elections. An ink bottle broken against an American Embassy, a fire set in an American library, an insult committed against our American flag, anywhere in the world, does far less injury to our country and our cause than the discriminatory denial of the right of any American citizen at home to vote on the basis of race or color."

"In this same month ninety-five years ago-on March 30, 1870--the Constitution of the United States was amended for the fifteenth time to guarantee that no citizen of our land should be denied the right to vote because of race or color. The command of the Fifteenth Amendment is unequivocal and its equal force upon State Governments and the Federal Government is unarguable. Section 1 of this Amendment provides: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shah not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

"In your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society."

"It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don't think anybody has held this job who hasn't felt personally responsible for those being killed."

"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."

"It is the common failing of totalitarian regimes that they cannot really understand the nature of our democracy. They mistake dissent for disloyalty. They mistake restlessness for a rejection of policy. They mistake a few committees for a country. They misjudge individual speeches for public policy."

"It is the excitement of becoming - always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again- but always trying and always gaining"

"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."

"It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought."

"It means an educational system which does not simply equip the students to adjust to society, but which enables the student to challenge and to modify, and at times reject, if necessary, the received wisdom of his elders."

"It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

"Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store."