For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep empathy for the Kennedy family's loss while acknowledging the shared grief of the nation and a commitment to support them.
In this quote, Lyndon B. Johnson conveys the profound emotional impact of personal tragedy, particularly in the context of a national loss. He recognizes the collective sorrow experienced by the country following the assassination of President Kennedy and emphasizes his commitment to do his best in leadership, while also seeking guidance from both the public and a higher power. This illustrates the heavy weight of responsibility on leaders during times of crisis, as well as the importance of community support and shared human experience in coping with grief.
In practice
During a memorial service, I shared this quote to honor those who have experienced loss.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.
So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.
We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching and example, must come from the blacks themselves.
I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.
If there are only three guys at the top of the organization handling things, it's the definition of a bankrupt company. In creating leaders without titles, we are going to have organizations with people at the helm putting forth their best.
I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.
The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
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