Talk:Lyndon B. Johnson

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Sourced

Why were these quotes removed if they were sourced? Are the sources unreliable or something? Illegitimate Barrister 18:58, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

@Illegitimate Barrister: I see no reason why they shouldn't be included. The sources seem no less reliable than the ones presently used in the article. Sure, the quotes depict Johnson in a poor light, but that's no reason to exclude them. Some readers may be very surprised to find these quotes; that is the educational value they bring, helping readers to better understand the man's entirety, warts and all. Therefore I would support their inclusion. --Philpill691 (talk) 22:46, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. If you want to put them back in, I won't object. If they're reliably sourced, they should be included. At least, that's my opinion. They seem to be "he said, she said" type-quotes, so I think they should be under an "Attributed" section. Illegitimate Barrister 23:12, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I added the quotes back in. I put them under an "Attributed" section, since the primary record of him saying them are oral recollections from other people. Illegitimate Barrister 23:32, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced

These should be provided with sources before being moved back into the article.

• There's more niggers voting there than white folks.

• I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill.

• Does that include the ones buried in Omaha Beach?
  • Said to Charles de Gaulle upon his order that American troops be removed from French soil pursuant to France's withdrawal from NATO.

• Don't spit in the soup. We've all got to eat.
  • when he was U.S. Senate majority leader

• Don't worry son. It's my prerogative.
  • Speaking to Secret Service Agent who was shielding him outdoors while he was urinating, after urinating on his leg.

• Education is equipping our children to walk through doors of opportunity.

• For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say “Farewell.” Is a new world coming? We welcome it -- and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

• Frank, are you trying to fuck me? [...] your boys just shat on the American flag.
  • To CBS president Frank Wise, after watching a CBS news account of U.S. Marines torching a Vietnamese village.

• I knew he wasn't an American.
  • On Canadian-born reporter Morley Safer, who gave the aforementioned CBS report.

• I never trust a man till I have his pecker in my pocket.

• I seldom think of politics more than 18 hours a day.

• If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.
  • Having seen a report by Walter Cronkite that concluded that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. He dropped out of the 1968 Presidential Race the following month.

• If two men agree on everything, you can be sure one of them is doing the thinking.
• If you let a bully come into your garden one day, the next day he'll be up on your porch, and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed.

• My generals are always right about other people's wars and wrong about our own.

• Now listen, George, don’t think about 1968. Think about 1988. You and me, we’ll be dead and gone, then, George. [...] What do you want left after you, when you die? Do you want a great big marble monument that reads, ‘George Wallace: He Built.’ Or do you want a little piece of pine board lying across that harsh caliche soil that reads, ‘George Wallace: He Hated.'
  • Popular anecdote from meeting with Alabama Governor George Wallace, 13 March 1965.

• The Democratic party at its worst, is still far better than the Republican party at its best.

• We learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite for aggression.

• We'll pass any damn legislation we want; it's the Supreme Court's duty to declare it unconstitutional.
  • Speech in the House of Representatives.

• You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.

• You’re asking the leader of the Western world a chickenshit question like that?

• You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

“We have just lost the South for a generation”

General consensus seems to be that Johnson never said this at all. The article includes this quotation, and purports to source it, but none of the claimed sources hold up. The main claimed source (“President Lyndon B. Johnson's Radio and Television Remarks Upon Signing the Civil Rights Bill (July 2, 1964)) does not contain anything like it. The article claims that it was said “to Bill Moyers, upon having signed the Civil Rights Act” but provides no source. The article links to “Remarks by the President at LBJ Presidential Library Civil Rights Summit”, which is misleading, because this is a speech by President Obama that attributes the quotation to Johnson.

Unless there is a source for this, it should be moved to the “Attributed” section. — Dominus (talk) 00:17, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Bill Moyers' book says: "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come." [1] HTH --Mason1024 (talk) 12:33, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

I've read one article which questions this quote.[2] In quite a well researched article the author could not find any reference pre 2002.--Salix alba (talk) 12:31, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

@Dominus, Salix alba:, I independently found the same article, namely this one: "We have lost the South for a generation": What Lyndon Johnson said, or would have said if only he had said it but missed the bareurl link. Anyway, I've moved this quotation to Misattributed. The burden of proof is on those who claim it is genuine; I'm happy to self-revert if an actual source is given that attributes this properly. Mathglot (talk) 08:16, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

The same person who wrote the article mentioned above, in a later article, finds sources of the "long time to come" phrasing going back at least to April 1986, and no longer claims the phrase came from thin air but that Moyers was lying in 1986. I think this well belongs in Attributed though, Moyers has consistently quoted him in the same way all the way at least to his book in 2005 [3] Electron.rotoscope (talk) 19:22, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Missing Quote?

I think there is a quote missing. LBJ has a quote on this page: Privacy, but its not shown here. Is that intentional? (I just joined wikiquote, so if it is and I just don't know the policies I'm sorry) --DannyS712 (talk) 05:21, 9 October 2018 (UTC)