Richard Nixon Quote

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.

Address to the nation on the situation in Southeast Asia (April 30, 1970); inPublic Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1970, p. 410.