“Strong as was Lyndon Johnson’s compassion for the poor, particularly poor people of color, his deep, genuine desire to help them had always been subordinate to his ambition; whenever they had been in conflict, it had been compassion that went to the wall. When they had both been pointing in the same direction, however – when the compassion had been unleashed from ambition’s checkrein – then not only Lyndon Johnson but the cause of social justice in America had moved forward under the direction of this master of transmuting sympathy into governmental action.”

Robert Caro, 2012, The Years of London Johnson, Volume 4: The Passage of Power.