Richard M. Nixon Quotations | Page 4

I made my mistakes, but in all of my years in public life, I have never profited, never profited from public serviceI have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could 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 am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.

Nothing matters more to the future of this Nation than insuring that our young men and women learn to believe in themselves and believe in their dreams, and that they develop this capacitythat you develop this capacity, so that you keep it all of your lives. I believe one of Americas most priceless assets is the idealism which motivates the young people of America. My generation has invested all that it has, not only its love but its hope and faith, in yours.

I refuse to make a decision that somebody else can make. The first rule of leadership is to save yourself for the big decision. Don't allow your mind to become cluttered.

My view is that one should not break up a winning combination.

I had never expected that the China initiative would come to fruition in the form of a Ping-Pong team.

[Peter] Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. Its the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong.

No failure is final unless you ratify it.

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.

With those who are willing to join, let us cooperate to reduce the burden of arms, to strengthen the structure of peace, to lift up the poor and the hungry.

Any culture which can put a man on the Moon is capable of gathering all the nations of the earth in peace, justice and concord.

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.

Failure isn't falling down. Failure is not getting up after you have fallen down.

Government has the responsibility to provide the climate in which Americans, all Americans, have an opportunity for good jobs; and not only for good jobs, but an opportunity if they have the ability and the desire, to be owners and managers, to have a piece of the action, because if they have a piece of the action, then they believe in the system rather than fighting against it.

The destiny of our land, the air we breathe, the water we drink is not in the mystical hands of an uncontrollable agent, it is in our hands. A future which brings the balancing of our resources-preserving quality with quantity-is a future limited only by the boundaries of our will to get the job done.

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.

We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost ... the right of free speech will be extinguished throughout the world.

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.

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

Baseball is great because anything can happen through the ninth inning.

I believe in building bridges, but we should only build our end of the bridge.

Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Office at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. . . . Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth.

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

My gravest secret is that I really did fake the moon landing. On Venus!

The people's right to change what does not work is one of the greatest principles in our system of government

Don't try to take on a new personality; it doesn't work.

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.

The only place you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don't give a damn. I don't care.". . . "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. . . Does that bother you? I just want you to think big.

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...

I got into a few games after they were hopelessly won or hopelessly lost, you know, when they put the substitutes in, and finally the water boy, and then me. That is the way it worked.

The only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.

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

It is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people. What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.

The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision - whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.

I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes.

Success is not a harbor but a voyage with its own perils to the spirit. The game of life is to come up a winner, to be a success, or to achieve what we set out to do.

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.

Once one determines that he or she has a mission in life, that's it's not...

I doubt if any of them would even intentionally double-park.

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

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

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.

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.

The language of politics is poetry, not prose. Jackson is poetry. Cuomo is poetry. Dukakis is a word processor.

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

I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice,

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.

This is a great day for France!

For years politicians have promised the Moon. I'm the first one to be able to deliver it.

There can be no whitewash at the White House.

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.

Our idea is to create a situation in which those lands to which we have obligations or in which we have interests, if they are ready to fight a fire, should be able to count on us to furnish the hose and water.

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.

A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

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

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.

I would not like to be a political leader in Russia. They never know when they're being taped.

So you are lean and mean and resourceful and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close you can walk without losing your balance.

There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example, in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space; there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you--in color television, for instance.

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.

The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways - to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

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.

The peace we seek in the world is not the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure for generations to come. It is important that we understand both the necessity and the limitations of America's role in maintaining that peace. Unless we in America work to preserve the peace, there will be no peace. Unless we in America work to preserve freedom, there will be no freedom.

But above all, what this Congress can be remembered for is opening the way to a new American revolutiona peaceful revolution in which power was turned back to the peoplein which government at all levels was refreshed and renewed and made truly responsive. This can be a revolution as profound, as far-reaching, as exciting as that first revolution almost 200 years agoand it can mean that just 5 years from now America will enter its third century as a young nation new in spirit, with all the vigor and the freshness with which it began its first century.

I have impeached myself by resigning.

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'.

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.

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.

For among nations - as within nations - the soundest unity is that which respects diversity, and the strongest cohesion is that which rejects coercion.

Our peaceful borders and our peaceful history are important symbols, to be sure. What they symbolize, however, is the spirit of respect and restraint which allow us to cooperate, despite our differences, in way which help us both.

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.

We have been through, over these years, some difficult times. During the period that I have served as President of the United States, we have been through some difficult times together, and I can only say that the friendship that we have for this nation, the respect and the admiration we have for the people of this nation, their courage, their tenacity, their firmness in the face of very great odds, is one that makes us proud to stand with Israel, as we have in the past in times of trouble, and now to work with Israel in a better time, a time that we trust will be a time of peace.

I like the job I have, but if I had to live my life over again, I would like to have ended up a sports writer.

What kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.

It is not enough just to be for peace. The point is, what can we do about it?

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonightto you, the great silent majority of my fellow AmericansI ask for your support.

I'd like to see people, instead of spending so much time on the ethical problem, get after the problems that really affect the people of this country

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.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

I let the American people down.

The press is the enemy.

Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use.

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.

Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country choose a second rate president.

Once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation is doomed to mediocrity.

During the Prince's visit, King Timahoe will be referred to only as Timahoe, since it would be inappropriate for the Prince to be outranked by a dog.

Those few days after Kent State were among the darkest of my presidency.

Peace is a great goal, but it is not a panacea. Neither is material wealth.

Listen, I don't know anything about polygraphs and I don't know how accurate they are, but I know they'll scare the hell out of people.

The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time.

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.

Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active.

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.

Bring us together again.

The great silent majority.

The events that followed our withdrawal from Vietnam, including the plight of the boat people and the more than 1 million slaughtered by the new communist rulers of Cambodia, showed that media critics who said we were on the wrong side were mistaken.

Yes, I wish I'd done it sooner.

There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means.

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.