Nixon's Quotes

#1. Vanity Fair magazine reports that former President Clinton and Al Gore haven't spoken to each other since George W. Bush's inauguration. Not only that, Bill and his wife, Hillary, haven't spoken since Richard Nixon's inauguration.

Conan O'Brien

#2. Few dramas in American political history remain more riveting than that of Nixon's exit and Mr. Ford's reaction, at first halting and then decisive, to the looming possibility of a former president on criminal trial for months on end.

Scott Shane

#3. Nixon's subversion [of the consititution] consisted of: One presidental lie; one invocation of presidental privilege, and zero criminal offences.

William J. Clinton

#4. Richard Nixon's career certainly ended in failure but someone who won an election with 60 percent of the vote, won 49 out of 50 states, that makes his -up to that point - incredibly successful. The idea of winning 49 states, incredible.

Frank Luntz

#5. Richard Nixon's conversation was loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides.

Rick Perlstein

#6. Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling.

Tom Brokaw

#7. Nixon's full term was one of the most successful in U.S. history, which is why he was re-elected by the largest plurality in the country's history.

Conrad Black

#8. After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon's tapes.

Bob Woodward

#9. I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon's Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself.

Bob Woodward

#10. Nixon's own protection from the assassin's bullet ... nattering nabobs of negativism ...

Spiro T. Agnew

#11. I'd always follow Nixon's orders, but you can't order somebody to be happy.

Charles W. Colson

#12. After the 1970s, when President Nixon's illegal campaign cash was used as a secret slush fund to pay for the Watergate burglary and cover-up, Americans have demanded to know where the money fueling our elections is coming from.

Eric Schneiderman

#13. The silent majority, that's actually an invention of Richard Nixon's.

Rush Limbaugh

#14. I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.

Sammy Davis Jr.

#15. Not a season passes without new disclosures showing Nixon's numerous attempts at criminal use of his presidential powers and in fact the scorn he held for the rule of law.

Bob Woodward

#16. Nixon's offences had been so long in the past, so much part of a different era that he now seemed like some lovable but bigoted uncle you tolerated at Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Jacob M. Appel

#17. In the background was the conclusion of Nixon's National Security Council that if the United States could not control Latin America, it could not expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world.

Noam Chomsky

#18. Nixon's attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form.

Bob Woodward

#19. I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told me what Nixon's last words were. And they were, on August 8, 1974, to the crew: "Have a Merry Christmas, fellas!" That was just so bizarre.

Harry Shearer

#20. The failure of the system to deal quickly was attributable to Nixon's lying, stonewalling and refusal to come clean. So it took 26 months for the final truth to be known.

Bob Woodward

#21. Voters who disregarded Richard Nixon's involvement in the questionable ethics issue that led to his Checkers speech should not have been surprised when he orchestrated the Watergate cover-up as president.

Ronald Kessler

#22. Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?

Paul Newman

#23. Without the tape-recorded evidence demonstrating irrefutably, in Nixon's own voice, his knowledge of and active involvement in obstruction of justice, it is likely that Nixon would have escaped impeachment and removal from office.

Richard Ben-Veniste

#24. Funny that all of Nixon's crimes - anonymous campaign cash, wiretapping, undeclared wars - are all legal now. Discuss.

Bill Maher

#25. Lyndon Johnson may have escalated the war, but when I was drafted and shipped off to Vietnam, the signature on my orders was Nixon's.

Bob Gunton

#26. The White House tapes, recording Nixon's nefarious doings from Watergate to the bombing of Vietnam, made frightening reading once made public on the orders of Congress.

Nigel Hamilton

#27. When you hear in the tape recordings Nixon's own voice saying, We have to stonewall, We have to lie to the Grand Jury, We have to pay burglars a million dollars, it's all too clear the horror of what went on.

Bob Woodward

#28. I was fourteen when Kissinger made his secret trip to China, and then there was subsequently Nixon's trip to China, and I was very much seized with an interest in China.

John Pomfret

#29. If President Nixon's secretary, Rosemary Woods, had been Moses' secretary, there would only be eight commandments.

Art Buchwald

#30. Nixon's shifty eyes and perpetual 5 o'clock shadow made him a natural fit for caricatured villainy.

Richard Corliss

#31. I was born in 1970 and I got to see a little bit of [Richard] Nixon's attempts at redefining himself. I saw [Gerald] Ford.

David Mandel

#32. The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt.

David Pietrusza

#33. I wasn't playing Nixon's satirical stick figure. I was playing Nixon the man. As an actor, I felt I had to get to the deeply flawed humanity of the guy.

Harry Shearer

#34. Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.

Harry Shearer

#35. Nixon's grand mistake was his failure to understand that Americans are forgiving, and if he had admitted error early and apologized to the country, he would have escaped.

Bob Woodward

#36. wreck but Trot Nixon's fair ball nestled in his glove.

The New York Times

#37. Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning fifty feet off shore, he'd throw you a thirty foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way.

Mort Sahl

#38. Nixon's avowedly 'square' White House was, in fact, less cheesy than Clinton's Lite FM programming and more confident than the Kennedys' culturally craven collect-the-set approach.

Mark Steyn

#39. Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know

Neil Young

#40. Covering Richard Nixon's triumphant run in 1968 turned out to be my last major assignment as a general correspondent for CBS News. In September of that year, '60 Minutes' made its debut and I began the best, the most fulfilling job a reporter could imagine.

Mike Wallace

#41. When Richard M. Nixon resigned and Ford became the 38th president of the United States, the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office, of which I was a member, was preparing for the criminal trials of Nixon's top aides - H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell.

Richard Ben-Veniste

#42. We've come a long way since Nixon's first visit to China, or Carter's reestablishment of diplomatic relations.

Gary Locke

#43. Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's southern strategy, and now people are paying the price.

Deborah Kass

#44. JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting.

David Pietrusza

#45. In 1971, near the middle of Nixon's first term, he approved a plan to install a White House taping system as a way of preserving an accurate chronicle of important discussions and decisions. Except for Nixon, three aides, and the Secret Service, no one knew about the listening devices.

Douglas Brinkley

#46. I became a Republican in the summer of 1972. I was involved in running President Nixon's re-election campaign in California and became part of his administration at the start of his second term.

Ed Rollins

#47. Nixon's deep antipathy toward Jews is well known, and he took a strange satisfaction in having Kissinger in his inner circle, where he could periodically taunt him.

Robert Dallek

#48. Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism
which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.

Hunter S. Thompson

#49. It's long been common practice among many to draw a distinction between "human rights" and "property rights," suggesting that the two are separate and unequal - with "property rights" second to "human rights."

Richard M. Nixon

#50. The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President.

Hunter S. Thompson

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

Richard M. Nixon

#52. I want to inspire people to be better, to do better, to dance better, and I want to help to grow this next generation. That's something that's really, really important to me, and I just want to be freaking good at everything I do.

Vivian Nixon

#53. I feel that between my experience and my mother's, breast cancer is a little bit like someone who lives next door. I know what that person looks like and what their daily habits are.

Cynthia Nixon

#54. 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

Richard M. Nixon

#55. I always sort of thought, 'I'm probably going to get breast cancer. There's a really good chance.'

Cynthia Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

#57. When we are covering our service member by the shield of prayer, we are engaging God's defense system of protection.

Lisa Nixon Phillips

#58. One trouble with living beyond your deserved number of years is that there's always some reason to live another year. And I'd like to live another year so that Nixon won't be President. If he's re-elected I'll have to live another four years.

Rex Stout

#59. You know very well that whether you are on page one or page thirty depends on whether they fear you. It's as simple as that.

Richard M. Nixon

#60. Now I have a third must-do on my list of things to do with cancer, and it's this: follow your gut, ask questions, don't be complacent.

Cynthia Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

#62. Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today's political scene.

Noam Chomsky

#63. I'm quite contradictory - a bit OCD, but quite untidy. I have piles of stuff everywhere, but they make sense to me. And I'll find the one thing in the room that's my boyfriend's, and complain about him leaving it out.

Kimberley Nixon

#64. Abortion is a right I feel must not go away, and I feel like people aren't mobilizing so much because it's so complicated and it's difficult to understand.

Cynthia Nixon

#65. [C. Montgomery] Burns is much purer evil than Nixon was. I think it's the purity of his evil that attracts me as a comic character.

Harry Shearer

#66. By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

Hunter S. Thompson

#67. There is no such thing as a dead language, only a dead lay that's a little too quiet for my tastes.

Scott Jonathan Nixon

#68. Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active.

Richard M. Nixon

#69. Whatever else might be said about Nixon - and there is still serious doubt in my mind that he could pass for Human - he is a goddamn stone fanatic on every facet of pro football.

Hunter S. Thompson

#70. A week earlier I'd been locked into the idea that the Redskins would win easily
but when Nixon came out for them and George Allen began televising his prayer meetings I decided that any team with both God and Nixon on their side was fucked from start.

Hunter S. Thompson

#71. I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal.

Hunter S. Thompson

#72. Then the Zionists got involved and affected relations. The U.S. Congress stopped the export of grain to Iraq from the U.S. We explained it as Jewish influence and our stance on Palestine.

John Nixon

#73. Anslinger's reefer madness did not caution even the seeds of efficient, intelligent, ruthless action ... The same goes for Hoover, sniveling Nixon, the whole miserable, wretchedly evil lot of them ... not a man among them who could have pulled off a successful coup in a banana republic.

William S. Burroughs

#74. Even though we know the origin of diseases, panic sweeps. It's one thing that frightens us, because it's your health and your body - it's more like a tangible threat; it's not like a foreign enemy you can fight. That was really what was uppermost to many of us whilst making 'Black Death.'

Kimberley Nixon

#75. Many hold that by floating the dollar, Nixon converted the U.S. currency into pure "fiat money" - mere pieces of paper, intrinsically worthless, that were treated as money only because the United States government insisted that they should be.

David Graeber

#76. Work extra hard on the beginning of your story, so it snares reader's instantly. And know how you're going to end your story before you start writing. Without a sense of direction, you can get lost in the middle.

Joan Lowery Nixon

#77. Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

Hunter S. Thompson

#78. We all know there are problems with Obamacare, and Washington's implementation of it has been abysmal. But rejecting Medicaid won't fix any of those things.

Jay Nixon

#79. The idea of making access to safe abortions harder and more expensive and more difficult, having to travel across state lines - that puts women's health and lives in jeopardy, which is something I think no one wants.

Cynthia Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

#81. Life. It's like a snow globe. From the outside it can look pretty, idyllic, calm. But in reality it's a sham. Look closely inside and you'll see everything is fake, plastic, very small and very, very meaningless. And then every now and again some bastard comes along and shakes the whole lot up.

Keith Nixon

#82. He's [Nixon] like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards. You'll see; he'll do something wrong in the end. He always does.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#83. Manson's the man who's responsible for "killing the Sixties." He really knew how to play up the whole "most dangerous man alive" thing when at the time, the most dangerous man alive was Richard Nixon.

John Roecker

#84. Yeah, it's a cover-up," Nixon said. "The cover-up is worse than whatever comes out. It really is - unless somebody is going to jail.

Tim Weiner

#85. The prevailing quality of life in America
by any accepted methods of measuring
was unarguably freer and more politically open under Nixon than it is today in this evil year of Our Lord 2002.

Hunter S. Thompson

#86. To be in your child's happy memories tomorrow, you must be in his life today.

Brenda Nixon

#87. Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

#88. First of all, we were never not speaking. It's gotten so blown out of proportion. It was a very straightforward difference of opinion. I think because we were so private and refused to talk about it, these stories just got out of control.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower

#89. Cancer is really hard to go through and it's really hard to watch someone you love go through, and I know because I have been on both sides of the equation.

Cynthia Nixon

#90. George McGovern, for all his mistakes ... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon,

Hunter S. Thompson

#91. At bottom, the decision to pardon Nixon was a political judgment properly within the bounds of Ford's constitutional authority. The specter of a former president in the criminal dock as our country moved into its bicentennial year was profoundly disturbing.

Richard Ben-Veniste

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

Richard M. Nixon

#93. You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? Wait till I whup George Foreman's behind.

Muhammad Ali

#94. There's more to getting to where you're going then just knowing there's a road.

Joan Lowery Nixon

#95. As long as I'm sitting in the chair, there's not going to be any Jew appointed to that court. [No Jew] can be right on the criminal-law issue.

Richard M. Nixon

#96. I really believe life is simple. It's all the other people that make things complicated.

Richard M. Nixon

#97. I'm not at liberty to discuss the governments knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO's at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject!

Richard M. Nixon

#98. The politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of. It's important to take a lesson from the days of Richard Nixon, when people stood up under a very oppressive president with a very oppressive Supreme Court.

Jill Stein

#99. Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

Hunter S. Thompson

#100. Here's a guy [Richard Nixon] who had no gift for small talk, never liked to be around strangers, was physically awkward, and he goes into the one business that calls for ease with strangers and a gift for small talk.

Harry Shearer