Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Unworthy as I am of your honor, I deeply appreciate your generosity. The torch of John Kennedy that I picked up when he faltered I shall proudly carry on as long as I have the energy and the life to carry it. I am most grateful to B'nai B'rith and the Anti-Defamation League. They have the gratitude of this Nation. In your half century of fighting discrimination you have never tired, you have never faltered, you have never lost faith in your cause and your cause has given faith to your Nation.

So we tonight, assembled here, pledge ourselves to democracy's greatest tradition, the New Freedom of Wilson, the New Deal of Roosevelt, the Fair Deal of Harry S. Truman, the New America and the New Frontier of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and after Tuesday, November 3d, the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. These are not campaign slogans. These are the beating pulse of the greatest political party in this country. They are the heart-beat of a Nation that is looking up at the stars and eager for tomorrow's dawn.

Many of you share the burden of this knowledge tonight with me. But there is a difference. For finally I must be the one to order our guns to fire, against all the most inward pulls of my desire. For we have children to teach, and we have sick to be cured, and we have men to be freed. There are poor to be lifted up, and there are cities to be built, and there is a world to be helped. Yet we do what we must. I am hopeful, and I will try as best I can, with everything I have got, to end this battle and to return our sons to their desires. Yet as long as others will challenge America's security and test the clearness of our beliefs with fire and steel, then we must stand or see the promise of two centuries tremble. I believe tonight that you do not want me to try that risk. And from that belief your President summons his strength for the trials that lie ahead in the days to come. The work must be our work now. Scarred by the weaknesses of man, with whatever guidance God may offer us, we must nevertheless and alone with our mortality, strive to ennoble the life of man on earth. Thank you, and goodnight.

Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate. To ask for patience from the Negro is to ask him to give more of what he has already given enough. But to fail to ask of him — and of all Americans — perseverance within the processes of a free and responsible society would be to fail to ask what the national interest requires of all its citizens.

I will be brief, for our time is necessarily short and our agenda is already long. Last year's congressional session was the longest in peacetime history. With that foundation, let us work together to make this year's session the best in the Nation's history. Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined; as the session which enacted the most far-reaching tax cut of our time; as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States; as the session which finally recognized the health needs of all our older citizens; as the session which reformed our tangled transportation and transit policies; as the session which achieved the most effective, efficient foreign aid program ever; and as the session which helped to build more homes, more schools, more libraries, and more hospitals than any single session of Congress in the history of our Republic. All this and more can and must be done. It can be done by this summer, and it can be done without any increase in spending. In fact, under the budget that I shall shortly submit, it can be done with an actual reduction in Federal expenditures and Federal employment.

Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot. But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice and fulfillment.

There are millions of Americans--one fifth of our people--who have not shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on whom the gates of opportunity have been closed. What does this poverty mean to those who endure it ? It means a daily struggle to secure the necessities for even a meager existence. It means that the abundance, the comforts, the opportunities they see all around them are beyond their grasp. Worst of all, it means hopelessness for the young. The young man or woman who grows up without a decent education, in a broken home, in a hostile and squalid environment, in ill health or in the face of racial injustice-that young man or woman is often trapped in a life of poverty. He does not have the skills demanded by a complex society. He does not know how to acquire those skills. He faces a mounting sense of despair which drains initiative and ambition and energy. Our tax cut will create millions of new jobs--new exits from poverty. But we must also strike down all the barriers which keep many from using those exits. The war on poverty is not a struggle simply to support people, to make them dependent on the generosity of others. It is a struggle to give people a chance. It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities, as we have been allowed to develop and use ours, so that they can share, as others share, in the promise of this nation. We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should.

THIS house in which you are visiting today is not a personal residence. And it must never be a political prize. This house is the house of all the people. For so long as I am your tenant--and your servant--I shall use this house as we are using it today: use it to bring together America's leaders from all walks of American life, to think together, to plan together, to work together for the future of America. As President, I would much rather explain why leaders of labor--or leaders of business-are in their White House, than to try to explain why either are not here or weren't invited.

Pericles said, "If Athens shall appear great to you, consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." As this center comes to reflect and advance the greatness of America, consider then those glories were purchased by a valiant leader who never swerved from duty--John Kennedy. And in his name I dedicate this site.

The new program I propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars is 1 percent of our national budget--and every dollar I am requesting for this program is already included in the budget I sent to Congress in January. But we cannot measure its importance by its cost. For it charts an entirely new course of hope for our people. We are fully aware that this program will not eliminate all the poverty in America in a few months or a few years. Poverty is deeply rooted and its causes are many. But this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens. It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside. It will also give us the chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come. As conditions change, and as experience illuminates our difficulties, we will be prepared to modify our strategy. And this program is much more than a beginning. Rather it is a commitment. It is a total commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies.

We will stay because a just nation cannot leave to the cruelties of its enemies a people who have staked their lives and independence on America's solemn pledge—a pledge which has grown through the commitments of three American Presidents. We will stay because in Asia and around the world are countries whose independence rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we would have to fight in another—or abandon much of Asia to the domination of Communists. And we do not intend to abandon Asia to conquest.

There are no problems which we cannot solve together, and there are very few which any of us can settle by himself.

Franklin Roosevelt talked about the one-third that were ill clad and ill fed and ill housed. After working 30 years with your help and your crusades and your radical editorials and all of those things, we have it down to one-fifth, but we still have got 20 percent, 1 out of every 5, that are in the poverty group. Twenty years ago, 5 percent over a 10-year period, coming out from 1942 to 1952, and from 1952 to 1962 it was 3 percent, and now it is 1 percent that is coming out--1 percent a year. From 1937 to 1947 it was 5 percent, 1947 to 1953 it was 3 percent, 1953 to 1963 it is 1 percent. Now it is getting a lot more difficult in this IBM age for those people that have no training, that live on the other side of the tracks--it is getting a lot more difficult for them to get out and cross the tracks and get out of that poverty classification. You have to help them by this poverty program that will provide them with training. Forty-nine percent--1 out of every 2 boys we draft has to be sent home because he is physically or mentally unqualified. That is the kind of folks you are raising. If I had to do that with my calves, I would go broke every year. If I out of every 2 of my calves was born and I had to have rejects, I couldn't make it. So we begin this poverty war from a position of unmatched prosperity, with national abundance. We have just concluded the most productive and prosperous quarter on record. I had the figures here a minute ago. I wanted to give them to you.

No one can live daily, as I must do, with the dark realities of nuclear ruin, without seeking the guidance of God to find the path of peace. We have built this staggering strength that I have told you about not to destroy but to save, not to put an end to civilization but rather to try to put an end to conflict. Thus, in the past 3 years, as our strength rose--and, in large part, as a consequence of that rising strength--we have been able to take more tangible steps toward peace than at any time since the cold war began. We established an Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. We agreed with the Soviet Union on a statement of disarmament principles. We signed a test ban treaty. We established the "hot line." We supported a U.N. resolution prohibiting the orbiting of nuclear weapons. We cut back on nuclear production while the Soviet Union did the same. And we have just completed the negotiation of a new consular agreement. And, as the Geneva conference reconvenes, we have before it a series of proposals that I submitted, designed to freeze strategic nuclear delivery systems, to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and to prohibit the use of force to solve disputes. And we will welcome any other proposal by any nation which promises realistic progress toward peace.

This year we must continue to improve the quality of American life. Let us fulfill and improve the great health and education programs of last year, extending special opportunities to those who risk their lives in our armed forces. I urge the House of Representatives to complete action on three programs already passed by the Senate—the Teacher Corps, rent assistance, and home rule for the District of Columbia. In some of our urban areas we must help rebuild entire sections and neighborhoods containing, in some cases, as many as 100,000 people. Working together, private enterprise and government must press forward with the task of providing homes and shops, parks and hospitals, and all the other necessary parts of a flourishing community where our people can come to live the good life. I will offer other proposals to stimulate and to reward planning for the growth of entire metropolitan areas. Of all the reckless devastations of our national heritage, none is really more shameful than the continued poisoning of our rivers and our air. We must undertake a cooperative effort to end pollution in several river basins, making additional funds available to help draw the plans and construct the plants that are necessary to make the waters of our entire river systems clean, and make them a source of pleasure and beauty for all of our people. To attack and to overcome growing crime and lawlessness, I think we must have a stepped-up program to help modernize and strengthen our local police forces. Our people have a right to feel secure in their homes and on their streets—and that right just must be secured. Nor can we fail to arrest the destruction of life and property on our highways.