Richard M. Nixon Quotes

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

I let the American people down.

I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes.

Listen, I don't know anything about polygraphs and I don't know how accurate they are, but I know they'll scare the hell out of people.

The man of thought who will not act is ineffective; the man of action who will not think is dangerous.

What we do with this peace-whether we preserve it and defend it, or whether we lose it and let it slip away-will be the measure of our worthiness of the spirit and sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives in two World Wars, Korea, and in Vietnam.

Television in its present form ... [is] the opiate of the people of the United States.

Some of the peoples of Africa have been out of trees for only about 50 years.

Idealism without pragmatism is impotent. Pragmatism without idealism is meaningless. The key to effective leadership is pragmatic idealism.

No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency - a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect.

Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top - or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things ... Life is one crisis after another.

My concern today is not with the length of a person's hair but with his conduct.

A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

It's a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways - to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Look at the Justice Department, it's full of Jews ... The lawyers in government are damn Jews.

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

For years politicians have promised the Moon. I'm the first one to be able to deliver it.

The only time in the history of the world that we have had any extended periods of peace is when there has been a balance of power. It is when one nation becomes infinitely more powerful in relation to its potential competitors that the danger of war arises.

The recent upsurge of public concern over environmental questions reflects a belated recognition that man has been too cavalier in his relations with nature. Unless we arrest the depredations that have been inflicted so carelessly on our natural systems-which exist in an intricate set of balances-we face the prospect of ecological disaster.

The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community - and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.

We have been through, over these years, some difficult times. During the period that I have served as President of the United States, we have been through some difficult times together, and I can only say that the friendship that we have for this nation, the respect and the admiration we have for the people of this nation, their courage, their tenacity, their firmness in the face of very great odds, is one that makes us proud to stand with Israel, as we have in the past in times of trouble, and now to work with Israel in a better time, a time that we trust will be a time of peace.

The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don't have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

But also out here in this dreary, difficult war, I think history will record that this may have been one of Americas finest hours, because we took a difficult task and we succeeded.

Mr. Stevenson has a degree alright-a PhD from the Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment.

Honesty may not be the best policy, but it is worth trying once in a while.

History will treat me fairly. Historians probably won't, because most historians are on the left.

Look, people get drunk ... People chase girls. And the point is, it's a hell of a lot better for them to get drunk than to take drugs. It's better to chase girls than boys.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

If in order to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and particularly in Indo-China, if in order to avoid it we must take the risk by putting American boys in, I believe that the executive branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.

With those who are willing to join, let us cooperate to reduce the burden of arms, to strengthen the structure of peace, to lift up the poor and the hungry.

You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.

The important thing is that we maintain plausible deniability.

The Soviet Union began by banishing God. The United States began as a community of people who wanted to worship God as they chose ... Man does not live by bread alone. Those in the United States whose desire to create a strictly secular society is as strong as Lenin's was should study this Cold War lesson closely. Communism was defeated by an alliance spearheaded by 'one nation under God.'

If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

This is a great day for France!

What a strange creature man is that he fouls his own nest.

Well, I'm not a crook.

I have impeached myself by resigning.

So you are lean and mean and resourceful and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close you can walk without losing your balance.

When I spoke at the St. Lawrence Seaway ceremonies in 1969, I borrowed some words from the monument there which I had joined Queen Elizabeth in dedicating just 10 years before. That monument, as its inscription puts it, 'bears witness to the common purpose of two nations whose frontiers are the frontiers of friendship, whose ways are the ways of freedom, whose works are the works of peace'.

I don't mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Nevertheless, goddamn, I don't think you glorify it on public television, homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates.

Where the hell is Chad?

The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.

The sky is no longer the limit.

The press is the enemy.

[The public lands represent] in a sense, the breathing space of the nation.

As we work to expand our supplies of energy, we should also recognize that we must balance those efforts with our concern to preserve our environment. In the past, as we have sought new energy sources, we have too often damaged or despoiled our land.

Military security has to rest, ultimately, on economic and polit
ical stability. One of the effects of the rapidity of change in the
world today is that there can no longer be static stability; there
can only be dynamic stability. A nation or society that fails to
keep pace with change is in danger of flying apart. It is important
that we recognize this, but equally important that in trying to
maintain a dynamic stability we remember

During the Prince's visit, King Timahoe will be referred to only as Timahoe, since it would be inappropriate for the Prince to be outranked by a dog.

When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.

Nations not possessing great power can indulge in the luxury of
criticism of others; those possessing it have the responsibility of
decision. Faced with a clear challenge, the decision not to use
one's power must be as deliberate as the decision to use it. The con

You don't know how to lie. If you can't lie, you'll never go anywhere.

Member Countries shall take necessary action and/or shall establish negotiations, individually or in groups, with the oil companies with a view to adopting ways and means to offset any adverse effects on the per barrel real income of Member Countries resulting from the international monetary developments as of 15th August 1971.

I don't give a damn about the civilians.

We are all in it together. This is a war. We take a few shots and it will be over. We will give them a few shots and it will be over.

Baseball without fans is like Jayne Mansfield without a sweater. Hang on, that can be taken two ways.

I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice,

Our peaceful borders and our peaceful history are important symbols, to be sure. What they symbolize, however, is the spirit of respect and restraint which allow us to cooperate, despite our differences, in way which help us both.

The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time.

While might certainly does not make right, neither does right by itself make might.

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

The ultimate test of a nation's character is not how it responds to adversity in war but how it meets the challenge of peace.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

The destiny of our land, the air we breathe, the water we drink is not in the mystical hands of an uncontrollable agent, it is in our hands. A future which brings the balancing of our resources-preserving quality with quantity-is a future limited only by the boundaries of our will to get the job done.

Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

The Congress, the Administration and the public all share a profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment, and the preservation of the Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man.

Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.

With all our differences, whenever we are confronted with a threat to our security we are not then Republicans or Democrats but Americans; we are not then the fifty states but the United States.

Publicly, we say one thing ... Actually, we do another.

I was born in the house my father built.

The finest steel must go through the hottest fire.

If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe.

History is a pathetic junkyard of broken treaties.

Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty.

In our own lives, let each of us asknot just what government will do for me, but what can I do for myself?

The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line.

What kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.

The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.

I have the greatest affection for them but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

The average American is just like the child in the family. You give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something. He is going to do something. If, on the other hand, you make him completely dependent and pamper him and cater to him too much, you are going to make him soft, spoiled and eventually a very weak individual.

I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana, I mean one that just tears the ass out of them. You know, its a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish.

I never leave a game before the last pitch, because in baseball, as in life and especially politics, you never know what will happen.

If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.

The lesson of all history warns us that we should negotiate only when our military superiority is so convincing that we can achieve our objective at the conference table, and deny the aggressor theirs.

We must recognize that the goal of a cleaner environment will not be achieved by rhetoric or moral dedication alone. It will not be cheap or easy and the costs will have to be borne by each citizen, consumer and taxpayer. How clean is clean enough can only be answered in terms of how much we are willing to pay and how soon we seek success ... It is simplistic to seek ecological perfection at the cost of bankrupting the very tax-paying enterprises which must pay for the social advances we seek.

There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

I know you think you believe you understand what you thought I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is exactly what I meant.

Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

My view is that one should not break up a winning combination.

As you know, the separation of church and state is not subject to discussion or alteration. Under our Constitution no church or religion can be supported by the U.S. Government. We maintain freedom of religion so that an American can either worship in the church of his choice or choose to go to no church at all.

The peace we seek in the world is not the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure for generations to come. It is important that we understand both the necessity and the limitations of America's role in maintaining that peace. Unless we in America work to preserve the peace, there will be no peace. Unless we in America work to preserve freedom, there will be no freedom.