CoachJim

“His presidency was a story of great achievement and terrible failure, of lasting gains and unforgettable losses. Whatever impulse future historians may have to pigeonholed Johnson as a near great, average, or failed President, I am confident that a close review of his time in office will leave them reluctant to put any single stamp on his term. Some people loved the man and some dispised him. Some remember him for great works and others for a legacy of excessive governance at home and defeat abroad. In a not so distant future, when coming generations have no direct experience of the man and the passions of the sixties are muted, Johnson will probably be remembered as a President who faithfully reflected the country’s greatness and limitations—a man notable for his successes and failures, for his triumphs and tragedy.

Only one thing seems certain: Lyndon Johnson will not join the many obscure—almost nameless, faceless—Presidents whose terms of office register on most Americans as blanks slates. He will not be forgotten.
(Robert Dallek in the Afterword to Flawed Giant . Page 628)”
― Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1961-1973

“It was the year of Birmingham, when the civil rights issue was impressed on the nation in a way that nothing else before had been able to do. It was the most decisive year in the Negro’s fight for equality. Never before had there been such a coalition of conscience on this issue.
(Page 213) quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.”
― Mark K. Updegrove, Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency

“Kennedy and the brief era in which he governed are part of a lost world, possibly irretrievable, when Americans believed in themselves and in their nation. I am not referring to a mystical Camelot, but to a time when polls revealed Americans trusted their government and believed in their nation’s purpose.
Page 5.”
― Stephen F. Knott

“Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that human history is thus shaped.
(Page 281)”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s