Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Even if we end terror and even if we eliminate tension, even if we reduce arms and restrict conflict, even if peace were to come to the nations, we would turn from this struggle only to find ourselves on a new battleground as filled with danger and as fraught with difficulty as any ever faced by man. For many of our most urgent problems do not spring from the cold war or even from the ambitions of our adversaries. These are the problems which will persist beyond the cold war. They are the ominous obstacles to man's effort to build a great world society--a place where every man can find a life free from hunger and disease-a life offering the chance to seek spiritual fulfillment unhampered by the degradation of bodily misery.

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.

Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.

Second, we must take new steps--and we shall make new proposals at Geneva--toward the control and the eventual abolition of arms. Even in the absence of agreement, we must not stockpile arms beyond our needs or seek an excess of military power that could be provocative as well as wasteful. It is in this spirit that in this fiscal year we are cutting back our production of enriched uranium by 25 percent. We are shutting down four plutonium piles. We are closing many nonessential military installations. And it is in this spirit that we today call on our adversaries to do the same.

I took the oath as the President only 12 or 13 days ago. Since my State of the Union Message on January 4 before my inauguration, I have sent to the Congress--will have, by the end of this week--16 messages--messages that are facing up to conflicts, messages that involve controversy, and don't doubt it, and messages that respond to the needs of this society. For what we have asked, we stand ready tonight to welcome all support and to confront all opposition. Believing that our requests are right, and that our cause is just, this administration is determined that the opportunity of this rare and most precious moment shall not be denied, defaulted, or destroyed. If some say our goals are idealistic, we welcome that as a compliment. For 188 years, the strongest fiber of America has been that thread of idealism which weaves through all our effort and all our aspiration. So let the world know--and let it be known throughout our own land--that this generation of Americans is not so cynical, and not so cool, not so callous that idealism is out of style. In a national house that is filled to overflowing, we are determined that the lives we lead shall not be vacant and shall not be empty. Your Government is concerned not with statistics but with the substance of your schools, and your jobs, and your cities, and your family life, and your countryside, your health, your hopes, your protection, your preparedness--and your rights and opportunities. For as Emerson once said: "The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out." So we are concerned tonight with the kind of man that the country turns out in these times and the times that are to come.

What greater legacy could you leave your children than to say, and have some little plaque on your living room wall, that somebody acknowledged that your grandchild could look up and say that his grandpa helped make it possible for every American to have an equal and fair chance, for that is what being an American means to me-equality, fair shake at all times.

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.

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 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, from whom we ask so much, are the cornerstone of our military might. The success of all our policies depends upon our ability to attract, develop fully, utilize and retain the talents of outstanding men and women in the military services. We have sought to improve housing conditions for military families and educational opportunities for military personnel. Since 1961, we have proposed--and the Congress has authorized--the largest military pay increases in our history, totaling more than $2 billion. To ensure that the pay of military personnel, and indeed of all government employees, retains an appropriate relation to the compensation of other elements of our society, we will review their pay annually. The procedures for this review will be discussed in my budget message. It is imperative that our men in uniform have the necessary background and training to keep up with the complexities of the everchanging military, political, and technical problems they face each day. To insure this, the Secretary of Defense is undertaking a study of military education to make certain that the education available to our service men and women at their Academies, at their War Colleges and at the Command and Staff Colleges, is excellent in its quality. In recent years large numbers of volunteers have been rejected by the military services because of their failure to meet certain mental or physical standards, even though many of their deficiencies could have been corrected. To broaden the opportunity for service and increase the supply of potentially qualified volunteers, the Army is planning to initiate an experimental program of military training, education and physical rehabilitation for men who fail at first to meet minimum requirements for service. This pilot program, which will involve about 10, 000 men in 1965, will establish how many of these young volunteers can be upgraded so as to qualify for service.

Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must rebuild the entire urban United States. Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.

I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy. We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores. 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. We must change to master change. I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and state and nation. A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality. I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. I propose to examine our federal system-the relation between city, state, nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people. As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors. Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and state committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.

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."

Throughout my entire public career I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant, and a member of my party, in that order always and only. For 37 years in the service of our Nation, first as a Congressman, as a Senator, and as Vice President, and now as your President, I have put the unity of the people first. I have put it ahead of any divisive partisanship. And in these times as in times before, it is true that a house divided against itself by the spirit of faction, of party, of region, of religion, of race, is a house that cannot stand.

For at the real heart of battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the democratic process. Equality depends not on the force of arms or tear gas but upon the force of moral right; not on recourse to violence but on respect for law and order.

World peace depends upon reason, on restraint, on negotiation, and on responsibility. We must move forward on many fronts. We must continue to strengthen the United Nations. We must strengthen and expand the Peace Corps. We must build new bridges, new bridges to the friendly peoples of Eastern Europe. We must, most of all, take this world out from under the shadow of a poisonous toadstool cloud. We want our children to say that this was the generation that split the atom, and this was the generation that united all men in peace. We are a powerful nation, but we are humble before our God. We believe that man has made his own problems, but that man can solve them.