When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the normalization of poverty in society and how those experiencing it may not even recognize it as a distinct issue.
Lyndon B. Johnson's quote highlights the pervasive nature of poverty during his youth, illustrating how it was such a common experience that it lacked distinction or recognition. This suggests that societal conditions can shape perceptions of hardship, making individuals unaware of their own struggles because they are shared widely among their peers. It encourages reflection on the social context of poverty and the importance of naming and addressing such issues.
In practice
In a discussion about social issues, one might say, 'As Lyndon B. Johnson reflected, poverty was so common in his youth that it didn't even have a name.'
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.
His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him.
Take away the miseries and you take away some folks' reason for living.
But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .
But this time I'm not to blame; I want you to believe that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like some one in a book.
Man must live, not only exist; he must do, not merely be; he must grow, not just vegetate.
Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.
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