Richard M. Nixon Quotes

Television is to news as bumperstickers are to philosophy.

Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does.

My strong point is not rhetoric , it isn't showmanship, it isn't big promises - those things that create the glamour and the excitement that people call charisma and warmth.

The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature. [If a president is successful in bypassing the Congress] it is evident that the people are cheated out of the best ingredients in the government, the safeguards of peace which is the greatest of their blessings.

History is a pathetic junkyard of broken treaties.

But it's not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time - it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco.

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.

Make sure you pay your taxes; otherwise you can get in a lot of trouble.

Anybody who wants to be an ambassador, wants to pay at least $250,000.

Publicly, we say one thing....Actually, we do another.

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.

...because there are no local or State boundaries to the problems of our environment, the Federal Government must play an active, positive role. We can and will set standards. We can and will exercise leadership.

The communists have lost the cold war, but the west has not yet won it.

Capitalism works better than it sounds, while socialism sounds better than it works.

We will establish a new system that makes high-quality health care available to every American in a dignified manner and at a price he can afford.

Let us remember that the main purpose of American aid is not to help other nations, but to help ourselves.

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.

Baseball without fans is like Jayne Mansfield without a sweater. Hang on, that can be taken two ways.

'Environment' is not an abstract concern, or simply a matter of aesthetics, or of personal taste - although it can and should involve these as well. Man is shaped to a great extent by his surroundings. Our physical nature, our mental health, our culture and institutions, our opportunities for challenge and fulfillment, our very survival - all of these are directly related to and affected by the environment in which we live. They depend upon the continued healthy functioning of the natural systems of the Earth.

Because the public lands belong to all Americans, this 1872 Mining Act should be repealed.

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.

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.

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.

I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth

[T]here may be some truth in that if the Arabs have some complaints about my policy towards Israel, they have to realize that the Jews in the U. S. control the entire information and propaganda machine, the large newspapers, the motion pictures, radio and television, and the big companies, and there is a force that we have to take into consideration.

Mrs. Nixon and I share the sorrow of millions of Americans at the death of Louis Armstrong. One of the architects of an American art form, a free and individual spirit, and an artist of worldwide fame, his great talents and magnificent spirit added richness and pleasure to all our lives.

As far as I am concerned now, I have no enemies in the press whatsoever.

I don't know a lot about politics, but I know a lot about baseball.

Television in its present form...[is] the opiate of the people of the United States.

The bastards have never been bombed like they're going to be bombed this time.

Violence or the threat of violence [must] never be permitted to influence the actions or judgments of the university community. Once it does, the community, almost by definition, ceases to be a university. It is for this reason that from time immemorial expulsion has been the primary instrument of university discipline.

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

I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.

When I spoke at the St. Lawrence Seaway ceremonies in 1969, I borrowed some words from the monument there which I had joined Queen Elizabeth in dedicating just 10 years before. That monument, as its inscription puts it, 'bears witness to the common purpose of two nations whose frontiers are the frontiers of friendship, whose ways are the ways of freedom, whose works are the works of peace'.

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

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

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

Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

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.

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.

A politician knows that his friends are not always his allies, and that his adversaries are not always his enemies.

I hereby resign this office of president of the United States.

I've never left a game before it ended. You never know when there could be a big turnaround in the game.

If I had feelings, I probably wouldn’t have even survived.

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.

It is essential that we take steps to prevent chemical substances from becoming environmental hazards. Unless we develop better methods to assure adequate testing of chemicals, we will be inviting the environmental crisis of the future.

It has been said that Canada is bounded 'on the north by gold, on the west by the East, on the east by history - and on the south by friends'.* We hope that will always be the case and we hope it will be the case not only with respect to the United States, your immediate neighbor to the south, but with respect to all your southern neighbors - and ours - who are bound by the great forces of geography and history which are distinctive to the New World.