Richard Nixon Quotes

190 Sourced Quotes

Guile, vanity, dissembling … might be unattractive habits, but to the leader, they can be essential. He needs guile in order to hold together the shifting coalitions of often bitterly opposed interest groups that governing requires. He needs a certain measure of vanity in order to create the right public impression. He sometimes has to dissemble in order to prevail on crucial issues.

Richard Nixon
This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.

Richard Nixon
If you are going to lie, you go to jail for the lie rather than the crime. So believe me, don't ever lie.

Richard Nixon
Let us build a structure of peace in the world in which the weak are as safe as the strong—in which each respects the right of the other to live by a different system—in which those who would influence others will do so by the strength of their ideas, and not by the force of their arms.
Let us accept that high responsibility not as a burden, but gladly—gladly because the chance to build such a peace is the noblest endeavor in which a nation can engage; gladly, also, because only if we act greatly in meeting our responsibilities abroad will we remain a great Nation, and only if we remain a great Nation will we act greatly in meeting our challenges at home.

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

Richard Nixon
At home, we must reject the mistaken notion - a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long - that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

Richard Nixon
Now, some may ask why we don't get rid of the bases, since the Soviet Government declares today that it has only peaceful intentions. The answer is that whenever the fear and suspicions that caused us and our Allies to take measures for collective self-defense are removed, the reason for our maintaining bases will be removed. In other words, the only possible solution of this problem lies in mutual, rather than unilateral action leading toward disarmament.

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
When they go to take a bite out of the world, the Soviets are not fussy eaters.

Richard Nixon
By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the healing.

Richard Nixon
Men of intellectual and moral eminence who encourage public disobedience of the law are responsible for the acts of those who inevitably follow their counsel: the poor, the ignorant and the impressionable. For example, to the professor objecting to de facto segregation, it may be crystal clear where civil disobedience may begin and where it must end. But the boundaries have become fluid to his students and other listeners. Today in the urban slums, the limits of responsible action are all but invisible.

Richard Nixon
My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.

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
What are our schools for if not for indoctrination against communism?

Richard Nixon
The most important thing about man's first footsteps on the Moon is what they promise for the future.

Richard Nixon
While technically I did not commit a crime, an impeachable offense... these are legalisms, as far as the handling of this matter is concerned; it was so botched up, I made so many bad judgments. The worst ones, mistakes of the heart, rather than the head. But let me say, a man in that top job - he's got to have a heart, but his head must always rule his heart.

Richard Nixon
In our own lives, let each of us ask—not just what government will do for me, but what can I do for myself?

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
I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry and he has his hand on the nuclear button and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.

Richard Nixon
This administration has proved that it is utterly incapable of cleaning out the corruption which has completely eroded it and reestablishing the confidence and faith of the American people in the morality and honesty of their government employees.

Richard Nixon