Top 100 Quotes About Richard Nixon
#1. Mrs. Nixon and I share the sorrow of millions of Americans at the death of Louis Armstrong. One of the architects of an American art form, a free and individual spirit, and an artist of worldwide fame, his great talents and magnificent spirit added richness and pleasure to all our lives.
Richard M. Nixon
#2. I have characterized Nixon as a loner, a cold man with great self-confidence and a one-track mind centered on the advancement of Richard Nixon.
Barry Goldwater
#3. The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.
Richard M. Nixon
#4. Even when you sign a treaty like I think [Richard] Nixon did, the anti-ballistic missile treaty, George W. Bush reneged on it. He got out of. So any treaty can be withdrawn from.
Jerry Brown
#5. He was arguably the best-qualified FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover; he thought Clinton was the most talented politician since Richard Nixon. That made their mutual contempt all the more tragic. It undermined the FBI and ultimately damaged the United States.
Tim Weiner
#7. I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.
Richard M. Nixon
#9. 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
#10. 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.
Richard M. Nixon
#11. The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work.
Richard M. Nixon
#13. You have an imperial presidency that makes Richard Nixon look like a boy scout.
Allen West
#14. 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
#15. It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.
Richard M. Nixon
#16. The fact of the Watergate cover-up is not nearly as interesting as the step into making the cover-up. And when you understand the step, you understand that Richard Nixon lied. That he was a criminal.
Bob Woodward
#17. Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented. Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it.
John Dean
#18. In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.
Richard M. Nixon
#21. Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency.
Rick Perlstein
#22. I'm old enough to remember Richard Nixon. They called it the imperial presidency when he was refusing to spend money that Congress had appropriated.
Angus King
#23. Let us remember that the main purpose of American aid is not to help other nations, but to help ourselves.
Richard M. Nixon
#24. 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
#25. Article II of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon was just the simple fact that he talked about and suggested the potential use of the IRS against one or two political opponents.
Monica Crowley
#26. Economic power is not the same as strength of national character. Our country may be rich in goods, but we are poor in spirit.
Richard M. Nixon
#27. 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.
Richard M. Nixon
#28. Communism starts with the proposition that there are no universal truths or general truths of human nature.
Richard M. Nixon
#29. I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice,
Richard M. Nixon
#30. A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.
Richard M. Nixon
#31. 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
#32. You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character.
Richard M. Nixon
#33. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men (and women) of flesh and blood.
Richard M. Nixon
#34. Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?
Johnny Carson
#35. We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon.
Dave Barry
#36. I'll speak for the man, or against him, whichever will do him the most good.
Richard M. Nixon
#38. While I do not believe Ford was wrong to pardon Nixon, the timing of the pardon was premature and may have cost Ford the margin of victory in the 1976 election.
Richard Ben-Veniste
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government, you can't believe what they say, and you can't rely on their judgment.
Richard M. Nixon
#42. Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.
Richard M. Nixon
#43. Make sure you pay your taxes; otherwise you can get in a lot of trouble.
Richard M. Nixon
#44. 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.
Richard M. Nixon
#45. People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.
Richard M. Nixon
#48. The communists have lost the cold war, but the west has not yet won it.
Richard M. Nixon
#49. The developing coherence of Asian regional thinking is reflected in a disposition to consider problems and loyalties in regional terms, and to evolve regional approaches to development needs and to the evolution of a New World Order.
Richard M. Nixon
#50. 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.
Richard M. Nixon
#51. Until he has been part of a cause larger than himself, no man is truly whole.
Richard M. Nixon
#52. Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use.
Richard M. Nixon
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. Nixon, with his mellifluous baritone, was a great politician for radio but creepy on TV.
Richard Corliss
#56. John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer.
Robert Dallek
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. (Adlai Stevenson once said to Richard Nixon: If you stop telling lies about me I'll stop telling the truth about you.
Christopher Hitchens
#60. Our souls speak from across the miles, intertwined, you and I.
Richard M. Nixon
#61. Millions who endure poverty and bad government can now know what they are missing. To see how the other half lives all they have to do is switch on their television sets.
Richard M. Nixon
#62. Capitalism works better than it sounds, while socialism sounds better than it works.
Richard M. Nixon
#63. I've never left a game before it ended. You never know when there could be a big turnaround in the game.
Richard M. Nixon
#64. What we have done with the American Indian is its way as bad as what we imposed on the Negroes. We took a proud and independent race and virtually destroyed them. We have to find ways to bring them back into decent lives in this country.
Richard M. Nixon
#66. The language of politics is poetry, not prose. Jackson is poetry. Cuomo is poetry. Dukakis is a word processor.
Richard M. Nixon
#67. 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.
Richard M. Nixon
#68. I doubt if any of them would even intentionally double-park.
Richard M. Nixon
#69. The death of JFK to the resignation of Richard Nixon marked a great turning point in American life.
Pierre Salinger
#70. 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
#71. During our visits, he consumed an embarrassingly varied assortment of cheap beer and wine, vacillating between fury and melancholy as one might imagine Richard Nixon to be doing not far away. Sometimes he choked on his emotions so badly I feared I would have to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
#72. 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
#73. I learned that the people who have the cards are usually the ones who talk the least and the softest; those who are bluffing tend to talk loudly and give themselves away.
Richard M. Nixon
#74. Richard M. Nixon honestly believed in his bones that an organized conspiracy of liberal media insiders had literally been plotting against him ever since he broke Alger Hiss in 1948 (he never shifted course, and lost his soul).
Rick Perlstein
#75. Let me just say this, and I want to say this to the televison audience: I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service
Richard M. Nixon
#76. My big subject as a historian is how Americans divide themselves. What are the divisions that structure our political lives. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were perfect foils for that story.
Rick Perlstein
#77. The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line.
Richard M. Nixon
#78. For among nations - as within nations - the soundest unity is that which respects diversity, and the strongest cohesion is that which rejects coercion.
Richard M. Nixon
#79. 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
#80. I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.
Gerald R. Ford
#81. Because there are no local or State boundaries to the problems of our environment, the Federal Government must play an active, positive role. We can and will set standards. We can and will exercise leadership.
Richard M. Nixon
#82. The only place you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don't give a damn. I don't care." ... "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb ... Does that bother you? I just want you to think big.
Richard M. Nixon
#83. I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal.
Hunter S. Thompson
#84. 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
#85. Things have gotten so bad in this country, you look back at Richard Nixon with nostalgia.
Ralph Nader
#87. Maybe New York shouldn't survive. Maybe it should go through a cycle of destruction.
Richard M. Nixon
#88. 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.
Richard M. Nixon
#89. I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.
Lyn Nofziger
#90. We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.
Richard M. Nixon
#91. Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted: peace is improvisation.
Richard M. Nixon
#92. 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
#93. I am sure you will be guided right in your decision, to place implicit faith in his integrity and honesty. Best wishes from one who has known Richard longer than anyone else. His mother
Hannah Milhous Nixon
#95. The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time.
Richard M. Nixon
#96. It is not enough just to be for peace. The point is, what can we do about it?
Richard M. Nixon
#97. The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.
Richard M. Nixon
#98. Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty.
Richard M. Nixon
#99. You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.
Richard M. Nixon
#100. Richard Nixon as a 12-year-old was given a portrait of Lincoln that he hung over his bed. Nixon also justified what would later be seen as abuses of power by comparing America in the Vietnam era to the country during the Civil War.
Richard Norton Smith
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