Richard Nixon Quotes

190 Sourced Quotes

The ability to be cool, confident, and decisive in crisis is not an inherited characteristic but is the direct result of how well the individual has prepared himself for the battle.

Richard Nixon
Now, when individuals read the entire transcript of the [March] 21st [1973] meeting, or hear the entire tape, where we discussed all these options, they may reach different interpretations, but I know what I meant, and I know also what I did.

Richard Nixon
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 Nixon
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 Nixon
There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.

Richard Nixon
I brought myself down. I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.

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

Richard Nixon
They can do it. Just leave them alone. That's a lifestyle I don't want to touch.

Richard Nixon
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 Nixon
I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint - no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided...

Richard Nixon
Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

Richard Nixon
Once you get into this great stream of history you can't get out. You can drown. Or you can be pulled ashore by the tide. But it is awfully hard to get out when you are in the middle of the stream – if it is intended that you stay there.

Richard Nixon
We are faced this year with the choice between the "work ethic" that built this Nation's character and the new "welfare ethic" that could cause that American character to weaken.

Richard Nixon
I want to say this to the television audience. I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.

Richard Nixon
I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body.
Resigning as president

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
You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.
It wasn't his last press conference though

Richard Nixon
Nowdays, If a news report does not tie up loose ends as neatly as 'The A Team', it is considered a flop.

Richard Nixon
There can be no right to revolt in this society; no right to demonstrate outside the law, and, in Lincoln's words, 'no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law'. In a civilized nation no man can excuse his crime against the person or property of another by claiming that he, too, has been a victim of injustice. To tolerate that is to invite anarchy.

Richard Nixon
I have the greatest affection for them [Negroes] but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

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

Richard Nixon
There is nothing wrong with this country which a good election can't fix.

Richard Nixon
You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.

Richard Nixon
Nixon: I still think we ought to take the North Vietnamese dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
Nixon: No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?. I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.

Richard Nixon
To make it possible for our children, and for our children's children, to live in a world of peace. To make this country be more than ever a land of opportunity—of equal opportunity, full opportunity for every American. To provide jobs for all who can work, and generous help for those who cannot work. To establish a climate of decency and civility, in which each person respects the feelings and the dignity and the God-given rights of his neighbor. To make this a land in which each person can dare to dream, can live his dreams—not in fear, but in hope—proud of his community, proud of his country, proud of what America has meant to himself and to the world.

Richard Nixon