President Richard Nixon Quotes

#1. I've said it before: Barack Obama is really the president Richard Nixon always wanted to be. You know, he's been allowed to act unilaterally in a way that we've fought for decades.

Jonathan Turley

#2. Though others may hate you, those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself. ~ President Richard Nixon

Chester Goad

#3. In the words of then - vice president Richard Nixon, the increasing crime rate "can be traced directly to the spread of the corrosive doctrine that every citizen possesses an inherent right to decide for himself which laws to obey and when to disobey them."37

Michelle Alexander

#4. 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.

Richard M. Nixon

#5. Why would anyone want to be President today? The answer is not one of glory, or fame; today the burdens of the office outweigh its privileges. Its not because the Presidency offers a chance to be somebody, but because it offers a chance to do something.

Richard M. Nixon

#6. 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

#7. 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.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

#9. With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character. Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have.

Richard M. Nixon

#10. They say it's the responsibility of the media to look at government - especially the President - with a microscope. I don't argue with that, but when they use a proctoscope, it's going too far.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

#12. K [Kissinger] called from New York all disturbed because he felt someone had been getting to the P [President] on Vietnam ... Henry's concerned that the P's looking for a way to bug out and he thinks that would be a disaster now.

Bob Woodward

#13. 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.

Richard M. Nixon

#14. Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong. (To Richard Nixon, on the Vietnam War)

Paul Harvey

#15. 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.

Richard M. Nixon

#16. 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.

Richard M. Nixon

#17. When President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for Watergate, he actually pardoned Alexander Haig for the JFK assassination.

Tegan Mathis

#18. If the President does it, it can't be illegal.

Richard M. Nixon

#19. 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

#20. The media will spend weeks going through pay stubs for Bush's National Guard service in Alabama in the waning days of war, but if Kerry tells them exotic tales of covert missions into Cambodia directed by Richard Nixon, they don't even bother to fact-check who was president in December 1968.

Ann Coulter

#21. The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment.

Richard M. Nixon

#22. 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

#23. I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.

Richard M. Nixon

#24. When he (Richard Nixon) took the oath of office, he pledged to be the president for 100% of the people, and I challenge the president to prove that he is being the president for 100% of the people.

Jackie Robinson

#25. Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?

Johnny Carson

#26. 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

#27. 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.

Richard M. Nixon

#28. Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me.

Jack Nicholson

#29. If I had feelings, I probably wouldn't have even survived.

Richard M. Nixon

#30. Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history.

Robert Dallek

#31. [On Richard M. Nixon:] Americans began with a president who couldn't tell a lie and now they have one who can't tell the truth.

Benazir Bhutto

#32. 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.

Richard M. Nixon

#33. 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

#34. I hereby resign this office of president of the United States.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

#36. Though it was never a goal in life, it has occurred to me that I've met six presidents of the United States. OK, I met four of them before they became president, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, No. 43.

Dan Jenkins

#37. I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-race power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

#39. A president can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.

Richard M. Nixon

#40. 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.

Richard M. Nixon