Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Richard Nixon Quotes
1. “Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.”
— Richard M. Nixon
2. “The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.”
— Richard M. Nixon
3. “Failure isn’t falling down. Failure is not getting up after you have fallen down.”
— Richard M. Nixon
4. “Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”
— Richard M. Nixon
5. “Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
— Richard M. Nixon
6. “Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.”
— Richard M. Nixon
7. “The sky is no longer the limit.”
— Richard M. Nixon
8. “The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time – it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine.”
— Richard M. Nixon
9. “I didn’t do anything wrong and I promise to never do it again.”
— Richard M. Nixon
10. “The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you’ve been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”
— Richard M. Nixon
11. “Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries.”
— Richard M. Nixon
12. “You find out who your true friends are not when you are on top of the world, but when the world is on top of you.”
— Richard M. Nixon
13. “Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.”
— Richard M. Nixon
14. “The important thing is that we maintain plausible deniability.”
— Richard M. Nixon
15. “The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson’s time.”
— Richard M. Nixon
16. “The Jewish cabal is out to get me.”
— Richard M. Nixon
17. “Capitalism works better than it sounds, while socialism sounds better than it works.”
— Richard M. Nixon
18. “We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”
— Richard M. Nixon
19. “Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
20. “The successful leader does not talk down to people. He lifts them up.”
— Richard M. Nixon
21. “Clean air, clean water, open spaces – these should once again be the birthright of every American.”
— Richard M. Nixon
22. “Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.”
— Richard M. Nixon
23. “You can’t depend on the man who made the mess to clean it up.”
— Richard M. Nixon
24. “Our souls speak from across the miles, intertwined, you and I.”
— Richard M. Nixon
25. “If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.”
— Richard M. Nixon
26. “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 M. Nixon
27. “Bring us together again.”
— Richard M. Nixon
28. “The great silent majority.”
— Richard M. Nixon
29. “Yes, I wish I’d done it sooner.”
— Richard M. Nixon
30. “They put the Jewish interest above America’s interest and it’s about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he’s an American first and a Jew second.”
— Richard M. Nixon
31. “Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.”
— Richard M. Nixon
32. “Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.”
— Richard M. Nixon
33. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
34. “This is a great day for France!”
— Richard M. Nixon
35. “Make sure you pay your taxes; otherwise you can get in a lot of trouble.”
— Richard M. Nixon
36. “The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.”
— Richard M. Nixon
37. “Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.”
— Richard M. Nixon
38. “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”
— Richard M. Nixon
39. “When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.”
— Richard M. Nixon
40. “Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them back.”
— Richard M. Nixon
41. “Solutions are not the answer.”
— Richard M. Nixon
42. “I’m not a lovable man.”
— Richard M. Nixon
43. “Before we become too arrogant with the most deadly of the seven deadly sins, the sin of pride, let us remember that the two great wars of this century, wars which cost twenty million dead, were fought between Christian nations praying to the same God.”
— Richard M. Nixon
44. “In his heart everyone knows that the only people who get rich from the “get rich quick” books are those who write them.”
— Richard M. Nixon
45. “Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.”
— Richard M. Nixon
46. “For years politicians have promised the Moon. I’m the first one to be able to deliver it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
47. “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 M. Nixon
48. “You don’t know how to lie. If you can’t lie, you’ll never go anywhere.”
— Richard M. Nixon
49. “The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?”
— Richard M. Nixon
50. “What a strange creature man is that he fouls his own nest.”
— Richard M. Nixon
51. “If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.”
— Richard M. Nixon
52. “If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe.”
— Richard M. Nixon
53. “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 M. Nixon
54. “I would have made a good pope.”
— Richard M. Nixon
55. “Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country choose a second rate president.”
— Richard M. Nixon
56. “You cannot win a battle in any arena merely by defending yourself.”
— Richard M. Nixon
57. “If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.”
— Richard M. Nixon
58. “Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.”
— Richard M. Nixon
59. “To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can’t trust the government, you can’t believe what they say, and you can’t rely on their judgment.”
— Richard M. Nixon
60. “I don’t know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.”
— Richard M. Nixon
61. “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word “crisis.” One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity.”
— Richard M. Nixon
62. “You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.”
— Richard M. Nixon
63. “History is a pathetic junkyard of broken treaties.”
— Richard M. Nixon
64. “The Congress, the Administration and the public all share a profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment, and the preservation of the Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man.”
— Richard M. Nixon
65. “They say it’s the responsibility of the media to look at government – especially the President – with a microscope. I don’t argue with that, but when they use a proctoscope, it’s going too far.”
— Richard M. Nixon
66. “I’ve never left a game before it ended. You never know when there could be a big turnaround in the game.”
— Richard M. Nixon
67. “The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.”
— Richard M. Nixon
68. “The developing coherence of Asian regional thinking is reflected in a disposition to consider problems and loyalties in regional terms, and to evolve regional approaches to development needs and to the evolution of a New World Order.”
— Richard M. Nixon
69. “The three most difficult words to speak are, “I was wrong.””
— Richard M. Nixon
70. “I don’t give a damn about the civilians.”
— Richard M. Nixon
71. “I don’t know a lot about politics, but I know a lot about baseball.”
— Richard M. Nixon
72. “If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?”
— Richard M. Nixon
73. “A politician knows that his friends are not always his allies, and that his adversaries are not always his enemies.”
— Richard M. Nixon
74. “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 M. Nixon
75. “I often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.”
— Richard M. Nixon
76. “I know you heard what you thought I said, but what I said isn’t what I meant.”
— Richard M. Nixon
77. “For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all of the people on this earth are truly one. One in their pride at what you have done, one in our prayers that you will return safely to earth.”
— Richard M. Nixon
78. “People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.”
— Richard M. Nixon
79. “Let us remember that the main purpose of American aid is not to help other nations, but to help ourselves.”
— Richard M. Nixon
80. “Tell them to send everything that can fly.”
— Richard M. Nixon
81. “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 M. Nixon
82. “My gravest secret is that I really did fake the moon landing. On Venus!”
— Richard M. Nixon
83. “I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.”
— Richard M. Nixon
84. “I believe in building bridges, but we should only build our end of the bridge.”
— Richard M. Nixon
85. “Any nation that decides the only way to achieve peace is through peaceful means is a nation that will soon be a piece of another nation.”
— Richard M. Nixon
86. “Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is a many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as Americans.”
— Richard M. Nixon
87. “I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war.”
— Richard M. Nixon
88. “You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to.”
— Richard M. Nixon
89. “I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes.”
— Richard M. Nixon
90. “Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren’t for the goddamned people.”
— Richard M. Nixon
91. “Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.”
— Richard M. Nixon
92. “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
— Richard M. Nixon
93. “The communists have lost the cold war, but the west has not yet won it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
94. “Once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation is doomed to mediocrity.”
— Richard M. Nixon
95. “It is in that spirit, the spirit of ’76, that I ask you to rise and join me in a toast to Chairman Mao, to Premier Chou, to the people of our two countries, and to the hope of our children that peace and harmony can be the legacy of our generation to theirs.”
— Richard M. Nixon
96. “The 1970s must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.”
— Richard M. Nixon
97. “A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life’s mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which otherwise would have remained dormant.”
— Richard M. Nixon
98. “God, of course, is the greatest philosopher of all.”
— Richard M. Nixon
99. “You must never give up. You must remember that you have to take risks in order to achieve anything and sometimes you will suffer defeat. But the mark of any individual is to recover from defeat and disappointment and go on and give it his best shot.”
— Richard M. Nixon
100. “Law enforcement officers should use only the minimum force necessary in dealing with disorders when they arise. A human life-the life of a student, soldier, or police officer-is a precious thing, and the taking of a life can be justified only as a necessary and last resort.”
— Richard M. Nixon
101. “Communism starts with the proposition that there are no universal truths or general truths of human nature.”
— Richard M. Nixon
102. “Maybe New York shouldn’t survive. Maybe it should go through a cycle of destruction.”
— Richard M. Nixon
103. “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 M. Nixon
104. “Italy hasn’t had a government since Mussolini.”
— Richard M. Nixon
105. “When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that can’t happen.”
— Richard M. Nixon
106. “Don’t try to take on a new personality; it doesn’t work.”
— Richard M. Nixon
107. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
108. “We seek friendly relations with all nations. Any nation can be our friend without being any other nation’s enemy.”
— Richard M. Nixon
109. “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 M. Nixon
110. “Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.”
— Richard M. Nixon
111. “Honesty may not be the best policy, but it is worth trying once in a while.”
— Richard M. Nixon
112. “A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.”
— Richard M. Nixon
113. “I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.”
— Richard M. Nixon
114. “The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line.”
— Richard M. Nixon
115. “The ultimate test of a nation’s character is not how it responds to adversity in war but how it meets the challenge of peace.”
— Richard M. Nixon
116. “I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
— Richard M. Nixon
117. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
118. “Peace is the real and right memorial for those who have died in war.”
— Richard M. Nixon
119. “My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.”
— Richard M. Nixon
120. “Because of the realities of human nature, perfect peace is achieved in two places only: in the grave and at the typewriter.”
— Richard M. Nixon
121. “I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden for the rest of my life. My political life is over. I will never again have an opportunity to serve in any official position. Maybe I can give a little advice from time to time.”
— Richard M. Nixon
122. “Anybody who wants to be an ambassador, wants to pay at least $250,000.”
— Richard M. Nixon
123. “America will not tolerate being pushed around by anybody, anyplace.”
— Richard M. Nixon
124. “The man of thought who will not act is ineffective; the man of action who will not think is dangerous.”
— Richard M. Nixon
125. “I hereby resign this office of president of the United States.”
— Richard M. Nixon
126. “Nobody is a friend of ours. Let’s face it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
127. “I never say something I cannot do. And I always will do more than I can say.”
— Richard M. Nixon
128. “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 M. Nixon
129. “When I am the candidate, I run the campaign.”
— Richard M. Nixon
130. “Where the hell is Chad?”
— Richard M. Nixon
131. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
132. “The average American is just like the child in the family.”
— Richard M. Nixon
133. “Tonight – to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans – I ask for your support.”
— Richard M. Nixon
134. “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 M. Nixon
135. “But more than anything else, we have learned that legal assistance for the poor, when properly provided, is one of the most constructive ways to help them help themselves.”
— Richard M. Nixon
136. “Voters quickly forget what a man says.”
— Richard M. Nixon
137. “If you are ever going to lie, you go to jail for the lie rather than the crime. So believe me, don’t ever lie.”
— Richard M. Nixon
138. “If I had feelings, I probably wouldn’t have even survived.”
— Richard M. Nixon
139. “We shall continue, in this era of negotiation, to work for the limitation of nuclear arms and to reduce the danger of confrontation between the great powers.”
— Richard M. Nixon
140. “Your mind must always go, even while you’re shaking hands and going through all the maneuvers. I developed the ability long ago to do one thing while thinking about another.”
— Richard M. Nixon
141. “We are all in it together. This is a war. We take a few shots and it will be over. We will give them a few shots and it will be over.”
— Richard M. Nixon
142. “Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
143. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
— Richard M. Nixon
144. “In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.”
— Richard M. Nixon
145. “History will treat me fairly. Historians probably won’t, because most historians are on the left.”
— Richard M. Nixon
146. “Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.”
— Richard M. Nixon
147. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
148. “You know very well that whether you are on page one or page thirty depends on whether they fear you. It’s as simple as that.”
— Richard M. Nixon
149. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
150. “We don’t owe the blacks a damn thing, anyway.”
— Richard M. Nixon
151. “I seriously doubt if we will ever have another war. This is probably the very last one.”
— Richard M. Nixon
152. “No failure is final unless you ratify it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
153. “You want a wife who is intelligent, but not too intelligent.”
— Richard M. Nixon
154. “It is not enough just to be for peace. The point is, what can we do about it?”
— Richard M. Nixon
155. “I learned that the people who have the cards are usually the ones who talk the least and the softest; those who are bluffing tend to talk loudly and give themselves away.”
— Richard M. Nixon
156. “I played by the rules of politics as I found them.”
— Richard M. Nixon
157. “I would not like to be a political leader in Russia. They never know when they’re being taped.”
— Richard M. Nixon
158. “My view is that one should not break up a winning combination.”
— Richard M. Nixon
159. “I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.”
— Richard M. Nixon
160. “There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.”
— Richard M. Nixon
161. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
162. “Until he has been part of a cause larger than himself, no man is truly whole.”
— Richard M. Nixon
163. “We should set goals within the limits of our resources while working to the limits of our powers.”
— Richard M. Nixon
164. “I’ll speak for the man, or against him, whichever will do him the most good.”
— Richard M. Nixon
165. “I really believe life is simple. It’s all the other people that make things complicated.”
— Richard M. Nixon
166. “Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”
— Richard M. Nixon
167. “The only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.”
— Richard M. Nixon
168. “Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much.”
— Richard M. Nixon
169. “As far as I am concerned now, I have no enemies in the press whatsoever.”
— Richard M. Nixon
170. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
171. “While might certainly does not make right, neither does right by itself make might.”
— Richard M. Nixon
172. “I doubt if any of them would even intentionally double-park.”
— Richard M. Nixon
173. “It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.”
— Richard M. Nixon
174. “Peace is a great goal, but it is not a panacea. Neither is material wealth.”
— Richard M. Nixon
175. “I have impeached myself by resigning.”
— Richard M. Nixon
176. “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.”
— Richard M. Nixon
177. “Writing is the toughest thing I’ve ever done.”
— Richard M. Nixon
178. “Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don’t care what they say, they like it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
179. “The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work.”
— Richard M. Nixon
180. “I think Congress has spent enough time on ethics. I think it’s time they moved on to something else.”
— Richard M. Nixon
181. “It’s long been common practice among many to draw a distinction between “human rights” and “property rights,” suggesting that the two are separate and unequal – with “property rights” second to “human rights.””
— Richard M. Nixon
182. “The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.”
— Richard M. Nixon
183. “The worst thing a politician can be is dull. At least I’m interesting.”
— Richard M. Nixon
184. “I let the American people down.”
— Richard M. Nixon
185. “A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.”
— Richard M. Nixon
186. “If I had my life to live over, I would have liked to have ended up as a sportswriter.”
— Richard M. Nixon
187. “People should not have to pay for pollution they do not cause.”
— Richard M. Nixon
188. “No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency – a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect.”
— Richard M. Nixon
189. “The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment.”
— Richard M. Nixon
190. “I don’t think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don’t. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional.”
— Richard M. Nixon
191. “Baseball is great because anything can happen through the ninth inning.”
— Richard M. Nixon
192. “Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?”
— Richard M. Nixon
193. “Jesus this song you wrote The words are sticking in my throat Peace on Earth Hear it every Christmas time But hope and history won’t rhyme So what’s it worth? This peace on Earth.”
— Richard M. Nixon
194. “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 M. Nixon
195. “Never be too proud to go onto your knees before God.”
— Richard M. Nixon
196. “What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?”
— Richard M. Nixon
197. “With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character. Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have.”
— Richard M. Nixon
198. “I gave ’em 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 M. Nixon
199. “Once one determines that he or she has a mission in life, that’s it’s not going to be accomplished without a great deal of pain, and that the rewards in the end may not outweigh the pain -if you recognize historically that always happens, then when it comes, you survive it.”
— Richard M. Nixon
200. “Communism denies God, enslaves men, and destroys justice.”
— Richard M. Nixon
