Richard M. Nixon quotes

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child.

• black

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

• advice

The Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

• burning

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don't care what they say, they like it.

• being

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

• american

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

• dignity

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.

• able

President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we're both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

• born

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

• anger

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.

• home

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

• admire

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

• age

When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.

• things

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

• being

Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

• destroy

Tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support.

• ask

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

• fire

Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top - or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things... Life is one crisis after another.

• another

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.

• anger

My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don't think Kennedy should have done it. I don't think Johnson should have done it, and I don't think we should have done it.

• bad

I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

• history

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

• think

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you've blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

• home

If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.

• blunt

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

• beautiful

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

• america

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

• forget

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job.

• history

Solutions are not the answer.

• answer

The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community - and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.

• freedom

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

• government

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.

• money

There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I'm not like that I never shoot blanks.

• big

I let the American people down.

• american

The press is the enemy.

• enemy

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

• america

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

• politics

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

• fly

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

• business

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

• address

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

• brought

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

• house

Watergate had become the center of the media's universe, and during the remaining year of my presidency the media tried to force everything else to revolve around it.

• become

If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

• american

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

• accused

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

• job

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

• mountain

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

• boredom

I don't know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.

• anything

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

• history

My concern today is not with the length of a person's hair but with his conduct.

• concern

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.

• carpet

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I earned everything I've got.

• crook

The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.

• time

I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

• another

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

• forget

It's a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it.

• cake

Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.

• negotiation

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.

• words

When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.

• illegal

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don't want to be a colony in a nation.

• black

I have impeached myself by resigning.

• myself

I've never canceled a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons or editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn't have any newspapers or magazines to read.

• bad

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

• risks

A president can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.

• people

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

• politics

Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

• yourself