Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Let me frankly state that I see two great difficulties with this proposal. In view of your public position, such action on our part would inevitably produce worldwide speculation that discussions were under way and would impair the privacy and secrecy of those discussions. Secondly, there would inevitably be grave concern on our part whether your government would make use of such action by us to improve its military position.

As it has come to every generation of Americans, to your hands--to your willingness to work and sacrifice and dare--will be entrusted the fate of the American experiment. Though the responsibility is the same, your task is different and much more difficult than any that have gone before. First, your world will be a young person's world. Fifty-five percent of the world's population is under the age of 25. By 1968 the average age of an American citizen will have dropped to 25. Your generation, the younger generation, is the world's majority. Second, you inherit a world with the greatest of danger, the largest difficulties, and the most promising destiny in history. No longer can we ignore the hopes of the poor and the oppressed. And for the first time we have the power to fulfill those hopes. You may witness a rebirth of hope or the ruin of civilization, you may witness the defeat of misery or the destruction of man. These are choices which you, too, are called upon to make. Third, as an American citizen today, you are also a citizen of the world. Your cause is truly the cause of all mankind.

And now I want to tell you that we have a great event in store for all of you: The happy warrior, the eloquent spokesman for the Democratic Party, the new Vice President of the United States, is arriving tomorrow at noon, and in his honor and in the honor of the men and women who traveled with us in this campaign, we are going to have a barbecue out on the banks of the Pedernales. I knew in Atlantic City that I had made the right recommendation to that convention so far as the Vice President was concerned, because I had observed him very closely ever since I became a Member of the Senate, but in the weeks that have followed that convention, I know even more that in my heart I was right. Hubert Humphrey left that convention with no orders and no instructions, and he traveled to 40 States and made no mistakes. Everywhere he went the people received him warmly and applauded his pronouncements. I predict that he, aided by his charming wife, Muriel, and their lovely family, will make one of the greatest Vice Presidents that this Nation has ever known.

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.

America's course is not precipitate. America's course is not without long provocation. For 10 years three American Presidents-President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--and the American people have been actively concerned with threats to the peace and security of the peoples of southeast Asia from the Communist government of North Viet-Nam. President Eisenhower sought--and President Kennedy sought--the same objectives that I still seek: That the governments of southeast Asia honor the international agreements which apply in the area; That those governments leave each other alone; That they resolve their differences peacefully; That they devote their talents to bettering the lives of their peoples by working against poverty and disease and ignorance.

No words are adequate to really express the feeling of this occasion. Most of all, I wish to be equal to your confidence, and to the hopes of all of the people of America. We have voted as many, but tonight we must face the world as one.

Last night I spoke to the people of the Nation. This morning, I speak to the people of all nations--so that they may understand without mistake our purpose in the action that we have been required to take. On August 2 the United States destroyer Maddox was attacked on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin by hostile vessels of the Government of North Viet-Nam. On August 4 that attack was repeated in those same waters against two United States destroyers. The attacks were deliberate. The attacks were unprovoked. The attacks have been answered. Throughout last night and within the last 12 hours, air units of the United States Seventh Fleet have sought out the hostile vessels and certain of their supporting facilities.. Appropriate armed action has been taken against them. The United States is now asking that this be brought immediately and urgently before the Security Council of the United Nations. We welcome--and we invite--the scrutiny of all men who seek peace, for peace is the only purpose of the course that America pursues. The Gulf of Tonkin may be distant, but none can be detached about what has happened there. Aggression--deliberate, willful, and systematic aggression--has unmasked its face to the entire world. The world remembers-the world must never forget--that aggression unchallenged is aggression unleashed. We of the United States have not forgotten.

These last 50 years have been decades of decision. In our conscience and in our laws, we have decided that children belong in classrooms and not in sweatshops and coal mines. We have decided that young women should work in surroundings of decency and not in sweatshops of degradation; that the sick and the suffering, the blind and the deaf, the mentally ill and the mentally retarded should have our care--and not our curses. Yes, in these 50 years we have set for America a direction toward human decency and human dignity. We have held our country on a course of compassion. The course we have set over those years--the course that you really helped to set--is the course of today's America. We are going to keep America moving. We are going to move forward with the American people.

[Gerald] Ford's economics are the worst thing that's happened to this country since pantyhose ruined finger-fucking.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.

While confident that our present strength will continue to deter a thermonuclear war, we must always be alert to the possibilities for limiting destruction which might be inflicted upon our people, cities and industry--should such a war be forced upon us. Many proposals have been advanced for means of limiting damage and destruction to the United States in the event of a thermonuclear war. Shifting strategy and advancing technology make the program of building adequate defenses against nuclear attack extremely complex. Decisions with respect to further limitation of damage require complex calculations concerning the effectiveness of many interrelated elements. Any comprehensive program would involve the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars. We must not shrink from any expense that is justified by its effectiveness, but we must not hastily expend vast sums on massive programs that do not meet this test. It is already clear that without fall-out shelter protection for our citizens, all defense weapons lose much of their effectiveness in saving lives. This also appears to be the least expensive way of saving millions of lives, and the one which has clear value even without other systems. We will continue our existing programs and start a program to increase the total inventory of shelters through a survey of private homes and other small structures. We shall continue the research and development which retains the options to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system, and manned interceptors and surface-to-air missiles against bombers.

We have in 1964 a unique opportunity and obligation--to prove the success of our system; to disprove those cynics and critics at home and abroad who question our purpose and our competence. If we fail, if we fritter and fumble away our opportunity in needless, senseless quarrels between Democrats and Republicans, or between the House and the Senate, or between the South and North, or between the Congress and the administration, then history will rightfully judge us harshly. But if we succeed, if we can achieve these goals by forging in this country a greater sense of union, then, and only then, can we take full satisfaction in the State of the Union.

There are good, sincere, genuine people who believe that there are plans that could bring us to peace soon. Some think that we ought to get it over with, with a much wider war. We have looked at those plans, and looked at them carefully. We have looked at the possible danger of involving another million men. We have tried to evaluate how you could get it over with, with less cost than we are now paying. We do not seek a wider war. We do not think that is a wise course. There is another extreme that thinks that you can just have peace by talking for it, by wishing for it, by saying you want it, and all you need to do is to pull back to the cities. We had that plan tested in the Tet offensive. They killed thousands and thousands in the cities. Those of you who think that you can save lives by moving the battlefield in from the mountains to the cities where the people live have another think coming. If you think you can stop aggression by getting out of its way and letting them take over, roll over you, you have another think coming, too. Most of these people don't say, "Cut and run." They don't say, "Pull out." They don't want a wider war. They don't want to do more than we are doing. They say that they want to do less than we are doing. But we are not doing enough to win it the way we are doing it now, and we are constantly trying to find additional things that it is reasonable, and prudent, and safe to do. So you have one extreme that says, "Let's go in with flags flying and get it over with quickly, regardless of the dangers involved." You have another group that says, "We are doing too much. Let's pull out. Let's be quiet. We want peace." Then you have a third group that says, "We don't want to conquer you. We don't want to destroy your nation. We don't want to divide you. We just want to say to you that we have an obligation. We have signed 42 alliances with people of the world. We have said that when an aggressor comes across this line to try to dominate other people, and they call on us to help, we are going to come and help, until you decide to leave your neighbors alone."

Four years ago, President John F. Kennedy stated to the Congress and the world, "The primary purpose of our arms is peace, not war." That is still their purpose. We are armed, not for conquest, but to insure our own security and to encourage the settlement of international differences by peaceful processes. We are not a militaristic people, and we have long denounced the use of force in pursuit of national ambition. We seek to avoid a nuclear holocaust in which there can be neither victory nor victors. But we shall never again return to a world where peace-loving men must stand helpless in the path of those who, heedless of destruction and human suffering, take up war and oppression in pursuit of their own ambitions.

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.