Johnson Quotes

The world is experiencing great change, but you've got loads of people terrified of this change and the Donald Trumps, the Boris Johnsons making utterly simplistic, reductionist policy proposals that are unrealistic but then people buy it up.

I think it was Samuel Johnson who said, "There are two kinds of information in this world: that what you know and that what you know where to get." The tools help the latter, and that's what keeps us from going nuts. The sense of overload comes from the gap between that sudden jump in volume (of information) and the tools we have to make sense of it.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?

When I grew up Carl Lewis was still running, Maurice Greene was running - he was that figure I see, like Michael Johnson. I really wanted to look up to the fast guys - so those two guys were some of the guys I looked up to.

Lyndon Johnson was thirteen of the most interesting and difficult men I ever met. He could be as couth as he was uncouth, as magnanimous as malicious, at times proud and sensitive, at times paranoid and darkly uneasy with himself. Freud would have had a field day with him.

Lyndon Johnson is still the most formidable, fascinating, frustrating, irritating individual I think I've ever known in my entire life. He was huge, a huge character, not only standing six feet four, but when you talked to him, he violated the normal human space between people. He was a great storyteller. The problem was that half his stories, I discovered, weren't true.

I consider myself lucky that Sheila Johnson, the cofounder of Black Entertainment Television, didn't choose to rest on her very impressive business laurels. Her luscious 100 percent modal scarves, printed with photos she takes all over the world, are gorgeous. Wearing one is like being wrapped in a hug.

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit

The stone that Dr. Johnson once kicked to demonstrate the reality of matter has become dissipated in a diffuse distribution of mathematical probabilities. The ladder that Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz erected in order to scale the heavens rests upon a continually shifting, unstable foundation.

I dabbled in things like Howlin' Wolf, Cream and Led Zeppelin, but when I heard Son House and Robert Johnson, it blew my mind. It was something I'd been missing my whole life. That music made me discard everything else and just get down to the soul and honesty of the blues.

Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity.

President Johnson put destroyers in harm's way in the Tonkin Gulf not only once, but several times, with the, with a lot of his people hoping that it would lead to a confrontation and claiming that it had. And could have resulted in the lost of many lives in the course of it.

Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it.

Pres. Lyndon Johnson was a middle-aged man of smalltown America, both a Westerner and a Southerner, and except where politics had demonstrably forced his growth-as on the question of civil rights-he functioned like most men, as a product of his background.

Doug Christie, what skill, what strenght, what power, what quickness. The visionof Magic Johnson, the athletisicm of Michael Jordan, the toughness of larry Bird. Dough Christie has it all

Elizabeth A. Johnson explains that including divine female symbols and images not only challenges the dominance of male images but also calls into question the structure of patriarchy itself.

Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case.

Every spring, this country will be reminded of the Lady from Texas. As trees bloom and flowers carpet our nation's capital, Lady Bird Johnson will be remembered. Only Lady Bird Johnson could, with her vision of a beautiful America, lay claim to spring as her memorial.

I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends. But I never seriously considered it as a career choice.

When I got back to NY had the opportunity to work with the beginning years of the poetry project which was founded with money from the OEO under Lyndon Johnson to work with alienated youth on the lower East side. This was extraordinary, to be able to help then to create a culture that would capture the energy that I felt at Berkley.

Two of the three men, who were imprisoned, Norman Butler and Robert 15x Johnson, convicted and given life sentences, I'm absolutely convinced were innocent. The real murderers of Malcolm X have not been caught or punished.

We've got characters in the UK like Boris Johnson, who's kind of like a proto Trump in many ways even down to the crazy blonde hair. Then Mayor of London, now Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson was widely seen as a cartoonish oaf and that made him strangely undentable as a politician. No one could land a blow on him because he was already ridiculous.

Liberals cling to the idea that critics of welfare are motivated by greed or callous disregard for the less fortunate. In fact, during the twenty-five years that followed Lyndon Johnson's declaration of war on poverty, U.S. tax payers spent $3 trillion providing every conceivable support for the poor, the elderly, and the infirm. Private foundations spent scores of billions more, and private and religious charities even more. Nevertheless, as Ronald Raegan later quipped, 'in the war on poverty, poverty won.'

I said if you want to be Keith Richards, you've got to listen to Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Then I thought, "What did Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry listen to?" I said, "They listened to Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters." Well who'd they listen to? They listened to Robert Johnson. I said, "Ok, we'll start with that."

Those original, black, spirited, defiant, rebellious musical masters. Chuck Berry was one of the first masters of Les Paul's new electric guitar; he pretty much laid down the gauntlet, and I don't think anybody's ever beat him since. Way before the British Invasion, I was tuned into the black guys that created the British Invasion. Without Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Motown hits, there would be no Beatles.

Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. "They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate."

I think there's almost an expectation that it should be Theresa [May] and Boris [Johnson]. I think they'd be real surprise if it ended up with someone else.

The guy, Magic Johnson, built a business empire and you don't do that just because you have a pretty smile. The guy is definitely a smart guy, knows what he's doing. He's a basketball genius. So to downplay that and disrespect that, I thought it was stereotyping him way too much.

I don't know what that gas is made of, but it can't smell any worse than Ernie Johnson 's gym bag.

Overt intelligent performances are not clues to the workings of minds; they are those workings. Boswell described Johnson's mind when he described how he wrote, talked, ate, fidgeted and fumed. His description was, of course, incomplete, since there were notoriously some thoughts which Johnson kept carefully to himself and there must have been many dreams, daydreams and silent babblings which only Johnson could have recorded and only a James Joyce would wish him to have recorded.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt, who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and a few others.

The greatest artists, saints, philosophers, and, until quite recent times, scientists... have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid.... I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake, and Dostoevsky than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw.

What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.

[Jack Johnson] became a superstar and started his own record label, and then he made and produced my first record, he co-wrote the songs on there, and then he let me open up for him for two years all around the world. And that was like the best start I could've had, the best way I could've started in the music scene.

You know in fairness Gary [Johnson] and I have not agreed on a number of substantive issues in this campaign, tax policy, we've had some influence on each other, I think I've had some influence on him, on constructive engagement around the world, he's had some influence on me in criminal justice reform issues.

I thought Donald Trump approach on Brexit was a fascinating window into how he thinks. His basic point was that [David] Cameron should resign because he didn't read the public mood on the issue right. And that Boris Johnson should be the next prime minister because he did. That's a very different definition of leadership than many politicians have. Or at least say they have.

All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn't fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn't fair.

I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.

A hastily written "Civil Rights Act" was rushed through Congress. President Andrew Johnson immediately vetoed it, noting that the right to confer citizenship rested with the several states, and that "the tendency of the bill is to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion".

You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose.

We now have a president who tries to save money by turning off lights in the White House, even as he heads toward a staggering addition to the national debt. "L.B.J." should stand for Light Bulb Johnson.

Throughout American history, we have elected presidents who had not been honest man. Warren Harding, Richard Nixon, to some extent, Lyndon Johnson just to name a few.

It's good to be compared with Randy Johnson, and it's wonderful to be compared to all the best pitchers in the game.

Lyndon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.

ALPHA-60: Your name is written "Ivan Johnson," but it is pronounced "Lemmy Caution," Secret Agent Zero Zero Three of the Outlands. You are a threat to the security of Alphaville. CAUTION: I refuse to become what you call "normal." ... ALPHA-60: You cannot escape. The door is locked. CAUTION: Try to stop me, pal.

The puzzle and conundrums of Emily Dickinson's poetry or The Cantos, by Ezra Pound, is infinitely pleasurable. Or Ronald Johnson's Ark. And the experience extends a whole lifetime. But the intensity of certain vocalized language affects our bodies in a particular way, and that further actualization propels me. The Greeks explored this; there were very particular meters used in making war, different ones for a love chant.

In 1964, I tried to convince my grandfather, who was active in the New York City firefighters union, to vote for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson because at the time I thought his approach to limited government was right on.

[Samuel] Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child's mouth!

Coming out of the anti - coming out of the Republican heritage of Abraham Lincoln, Frank Johnson could see it more clearly than Alabamians would, which led to the big confrontations between Frank Johnson and George Wallace.

Every politician - FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - they're all conservative by nature. They are part of the big thing and they're moving in a very constrained world.