Quotes – U.S. President Lyndon Johnson

“I want people around me who would kiss my ass on a hot summer’s day and say it smells like roses.”
– President Lyndon Johnson to Senator Hubert Humphrey

“Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament, and his Constitution may not last very long.”
– President Lyndon Johnson to the Greek Ambassador, 1970s

“The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance but agony. We have used our power not willingly and recklessly ever, but always reluctantly and with restraint.”
– President Lyndon Johnson

“Our one desire – our one determination – is that the people of Southeast Asia be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way.”
– President Lyndon Johnson

“Just get me elected, and then you can have your war [Vietnam].”
– President Lyndon Johnson to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, December 24, 1963

“I didn’t just screw Ho Chi Minh. I cut his pecker off.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson, commenting to reporters on the first American airstrikes against North Vietnam, August 5, 1964

“We own half the trucks in the world. We own almost half of the radios in the world. We own a third of all the electricity… Now I would like to see them [Vietnamese] enjoy the blessings that we enjoy. But don’t you help them exchange places with us, because I don’t want to be where they are.”
– President Lyndon Johnson before a junior Chamber of Commerce audience, 1966

“As a human being he [Lyndon Johnson] was a miserable person – a bully, sadist, lout, and egotist. He had no sense of loyalty, and he enjoyed tormenting those who had done the most for him. He seemed to take a special delight in humiliating those who had cast in their lot with him. It may well be that this was the result of a form of self-loathing in which he concluded that there had to be something wrong with anyone who would associate with him.”
– George Reedy, Lyndon Johnson’s former press secretary

“Lyndon Johnson was a monster… He was one of the few politicians with whom I found it uncomfortable to be in the same room. Johnson exuded a brutal lust for power which I found most disagreeable. When he said, “I never trust a man unless I have his pecker in my pocket”, he really meant it. He boasted about acting on the principle, “Give me a man’s balls, and his heart and mind will follow”.”
– Denis Healey, the Secretary of Defense in Britain in his memoirs

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