Richard Nixon Quotes

190 Sourced Quotes

Being controversial in politics is inevitable. If an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anything. In the world today, there are not many good choices—only choices between the half-good and the less half-good.

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

Richard Nixon
The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

Richard Nixon
Nixon: The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don't give a damn. I don't care.
Kissinger: I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.

Richard Nixon
This certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. For every American this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world I am sure they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what a feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one.

Richard Nixon
Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonightto you, the great silent majority of my fellow AmericansI ask for your support.

Richard Nixon
Foreign aid is the most unpopular damn thing in the world. It is a loser politically.

Richard Nixon
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.

Richard Nixon
Now listen here: Printing top secret information. I don't care how they feel about the war. Whether they're for or against it. They can't and should not do this and attack the integrity of government and by God, I'm gonna fight that son of a bitching paper. They don't know what's gonna hit them now.

Richard Nixon
Honesty may not be the best policy, but it is worth trying once in a while.

Richard Nixon
I'm not for women, frankly, in any job. I don't want any of them around. Thank God we don't have any in the Cabinet.

Richard Nixon
Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

Richard Nixon
This country needs good farmers, good businessmen, good plumbers, good carpenters.

Richard Nixon
The successful leader does not talk down to people. He lifts them up.

Richard Nixon
I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth

Richard Nixon
Because the public lands belong to all Americans, this 1872 Mining Act should be repealed...

Richard Nixon
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 Nixon
The Soviet Union began by banishing God. The United States began as a community of people who wanted to worship God as they chose... Man does not live by bread alone. Those in the United States whose desire to create a strictly secular society is as strong as Lenin's was should study this Cold War lesson closely. Communism was defeated by an alliance spearheaded by 'one nation under God.'

Richard Nixon
I never say something I cannot do. And I always will do more than I can say.

Richard Nixon
To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.
When we listen to the better angels of our nature, we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things--such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.
Greatness comes in simple trappings.

Richard Nixon
We must maintain the integrity of the White House, and that integrity must be real, not transparent. There can be no whitewash at the White House.

Richard Nixon
People should not have to pay for pollution they do not cause.

Richard Nixon
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 Nixon
We will establish a new system that makes high-quality health care available to every American in a dignified manner and at a price he can afford.

Richard Nixon
We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor's yard.

Richard Nixon
Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past.

Richard Nixon
As our cities and suburbs relentlessly expand, those priceless open spaces needed for recreation areas accessible to their people are swallowed up-often forever. Unless we preserve these spaces while they are still available, we will have none to preserve.

Richard Nixon
The recent upsurge of public concern over environmental questions reflects a belated recognition that man has been too cavalier in his relations with nature. Unless we arrest the depredations that have been inflicted so carelessly on our natural systems-which exist in an intricate set of balances-we face the prospect of ecological disaster.

Richard Nixon
While might certainly does not make right, neither does right by itself make might.

Richard Nixon
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 Nixon