LADY BIRD JOHNSON

A politician ought to be born a foundling and remain a bachelor.

Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.

It's odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don't quite fully share the hell of someone close to you.

No news at 4:30 a.m. is good.

Any committee is only as good as the most knowledgeable, determined and vigorous person on it. There must be somebody who provides the flame.

Children are apt to live up to what you believe of them.

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

Art is the window to man's soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.

Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.

Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.

I knew the Civil Rights Act was right … but I also loved the South and didn't want it used as the whipping boy of the Democratic Party

I did not have Eleanor Roosevelt’s courage, her energy, her determination … Mrs. Roosevelt just didn’t pay attention to all the snide things that were said about her. I respect that but I could not be like that.

[Asked if she campaigned:] No indeed ... I just go along ... and sit on the platform to show that I don't have a club foot.

I wonder if anyone but me will remember that June Teenth was always celebrated by all the Negroes in Texas …. It was the day that the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect a hundred or so years ago.

Lyndon, please tell me as soon as you can what the deal is … I am afraid its politics. I would hate for you to go into politics.

The first lady is, and always will be, an unpaid public servant elected by one person, her husband.

The gold coin is spent.

The need for women to have their own individual identity belongs to your generation, not mine.

Ugliness has been allowed too long. It is time to act.

We are narrowing the field of those who will run for office when we allow them so little privacy.

We have to change.

Beloved. You are as brave a man as Harry Truman—or FDR—or Lincoln. You can go on to find some peace, some achievement amidst all the pain. You have been strong, patient, determined beyond any words of mine to express …. To step out now would be wrong for our country, and I can see nothing but a wasteland for your future. Your friends would be frozen in embarrassed silence and your enemies jeering.

When he is pierced, I bleed.

One of the things about the White House is that you know from the moment you walk in there that this has a time limitation. You don't know exactly what it is; it may be the four years you were elected for, or death, but you know it's got a time limitation. And that's one reason why you do as much as you can do, because you know that this will never happen again, and you can drum up the energy from somewhere within you to go more, do more, learn more, for this limited time.

My friends, in this country we are entitled to many viewpoints. You are entitled to yours, but right now, I am entitled to mine.