The Public Record
Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. A member of the Democratic Party, he was born in Texas and began his political career as a U.S. Representative in 1937, later becoming a U.S. Senator in 1949. Johnson ascended to the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and his administration is noted for significant domestic policies, including the Great Society programs aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice. His legislative achievements included the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid.
When the history of our times is written the names of scientists such as Einstein, Oppenheimer, von Neumann, Fermi and many others will figure very prominently among those who helped not only to defend this Nation and preserve it, but to…
I want to negotiate. I want a political solution. I want--more than any human being in all the world--to see the killing stopped.
Maybe somehow, some way, sometime there will be somebody willing to sit down at the table and talk instead of kill, discuss instead of fight, reason instead of murder.
Science is so powerful as a force for change in the world that scientists must play a most important and an increasing role in the international affairs of the world.
And I ask myself that every morning and I reflect on it every evening.
I need your help and your support in the trials and tribulations that go with the leadership that is incumbent upon this great land of ours.
Why can't we have a political settlement? Why can't we understand our fellow human beings? Why can't we negotiate a solution? Why do men have to die?
We have not made any hard and fast decisions today, although we have explored many of the interests of our respective people.
It is clear from our discussions that the friendship that has existed and the close relationship that has existed between our two countries for more than the past two decades will be continued.
We want, more than anything else, peace in the world and prosperity for all of its peoples.
We are only now beginning to truly realize the impact which the physical sciences hold for the work of peace in the world.
The new ultraminiature devices which guide our spaceships and are giving us new medical tools are all the products of the last 10 years.
And when they do, I will be the first one at that table--wherever it is.
The country will need the help of scientists, including a large and strong contingent of physicists, if we are ever to be able to deal effectively with the central problems of the present and the future, to deal with the problems of peace…
I commend you for the role that you have played in the development of physics in this country.
They gave us the nuclear bomb--but they also started us on the course of peaceful nuclear power.
It is astonishing to observe the great progress that has been made since I first came here.
The transistor radio, the microwave communication links, television, and atomic energy are based on knowledge which had not even been discovered when you were children.
The whole world now looks to science to help it meet its growing need--and that need is great for food, for better health, and for a better life.
I want--more than any human being in all the world--to see the killing stopped.
We would of course warmly welcome you but if you can't come, we will thoroughly understand in the light of your own important problems in the State.
I do hope you can be with us at lunch honoring General Westmoreland on Friday, April 28 at the White House at one o'clock.
I extend the sympathy of the American people to his family and to the people of the Soviet Union.
Politicians like Lyndon Johnson
