Richard M. Nixon Quotes (141 Quotes)

What was Watergate A little bugging.

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

This is a burden I shall bear for every day of the life that is left to me.

Watergate had become the center of the media's universe, and during the remaining year of my presidency the media tried to force everything else to revolve around it.

The Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

People in the media say they must look at the president with a microscope. Now, I don't mind a microscope, but boy, when they use a proctoscope, that's going too far.

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.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you've blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

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

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.

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

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

I doubt if any of them would even intentionally double-park.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.

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

There can be no whitewash at the White House.

The peace we seek to win is not victory over any other people, but the peace that comes with healing in its wings with compassion for those who have suffered with understanding for those who have opposed us with the opportunity for all the peoples

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the healing.

Because of what you have done the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquillity, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and Tranquillity to Earth.

Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country choose a second-rate president.

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity.

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

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.

If you have lower than a ten percent turnover, there is a problem. And if you have higher than, say 20, there is a problem.

I've never canceled a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons or editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn't have any newspapers or magazines to read.

When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.

It is not too strong a statement to declare that this is the way civilizations begin to die None of us has the right to suppose it cannot happen here.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

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.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

The communists have lost the cold war, but the west has not yet won it.

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

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

I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes.

When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

I had come so far from the little house in Yorba Linda to this great house in Washington.

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.

I believe in the battle-whether it's the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

I turned into the helicopter the red carpet was rolled up. The White House was behind us now.