Lyndon B. Johnson Opportunity Quotations

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

We know that they cannot bear their share of the taxes to help pay for their education. And unless those children get a good education we know that they become dropouts and they become delinquents and they become taxeaters instead of taxpayers. We know that they will join the unemployed. That is why we put top priority on breaking the vicious cycle that today threatens the future of 5 million children in this great land of opportunity which we talk about so much.

In the Great Society, work shall be an outlet for mans interests and desires. Each individual shall have full opportunity to use his capacities in employment which satisfies personally and contributes generally to the quality of the Nations life.

Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement.

You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying you are free to compete with all the others, and still justly believe you have been completely fair...We seek not just freedom but opportunity...not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

...where legitimate opportunities are closed, illegitimate opportunities are seized. Whatever opens opportunity and hope will help to prevent crime and foster responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, at a time when the nation is again confronted with necessity for calling its young men into service in the interestsof National Security, I cannot see the wisdom of denying our young women the opportunity to serve their country.

Education is the key to opportunity in our society, and the equality of educational opportunity must be the birthright of every citizen.

We must open the doors of opportunity.