Richard M. Nixon

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported ...
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I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is ...
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We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until ...
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Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises ...
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Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated ...
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A president can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

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

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.

Castro couldn't even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.

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

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

Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.

I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

I am not a crook.

I have impeached myself by resigning.

I gave 'em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

I let the American people down.

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 an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

I've analyzed the best I can... and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.

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.

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

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.

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.

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

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

My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don't think Kennedy should have done it. I don't think Johnson should have done it, and I don't think we should have done it.

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

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out.

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

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.

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

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I earned everything I've got.

President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we're both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people.

People react to fear, not love, they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Solutions are not the answer.

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.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

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.

The press is the enemy.

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I'm not like that I never shoot blanks.

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.

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

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.

Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

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.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

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

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.

We are not spending the Federal Government's money, we are spending the taxpayer's money, and it must be spent n a way which guarantees his money's worth and yields the fullest possible benefit to the people being helped.

Well, I screwed it up real good, didn't I?

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.

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

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.

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.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job.

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.

You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character.

You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.