Top 300 Richard M. Nixon Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.”

— Richard M. Nixon

Featured in: Quotes About Fire

2. “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

Featured in: Giving Up Quotes

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

Featured in: Life is Hard Quotes, Stay Strong Quotes, Grit Quotes, Quitting Quotes

7. “The sky is no longer the limit.”

— Richard M. Nixon

8. “I didn’t do anything wrong and I promise to never do it again.”

— Richard M. Nixon

9. “The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time – it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine.”

— Richard M. Nixon

10. “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

11. “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

12. “The important thing is that we maintain plausible deniability.”

— Richard M. Nixon

13. “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

14. “Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.”

— Richard M. Nixon

15. “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

16. “The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson’s time.”

— Richard M. Nixon

17. “Capitalism works better than it sounds, while socialism sounds better than it works.”

— Richard M. Nixon

18. “The successful leader does not talk down to people. He lifts them up.”

— Richard M. Nixon

19. “The Jewish cabal is out to get me.”

— Richard M. Nixon

20. “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

21. “Clean air, clean water, open spaces – these should once again be the birthright of every American.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

24. “The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.”

— Richard M. Nixon

25. “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

26. “Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.”

— Richard M. Nixon

27. “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

28. “The great silent majority.”

— Richard M. Nixon

29. “Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.”

— Richard M. Nixon

30. “You can’t depend on the man who made the mess to clean it up.”

— Richard M. Nixon

31. “Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.”

— Richard M. Nixon

32. “I’m not a lovable man.”

— Richard M. Nixon

33. “Our souls speak from across the miles, intertwined, you and I.”

— Richard M. Nixon

34. “You don’t know how to lie. If you can’t lie, you’ll never go anywhere.”

— Richard M. Nixon

35. “This is a great day for France!”

— Richard M. Nixon

36. “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

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. “Bring us together again.”

— Richard M. Nixon

39. “I would have made a good pope.”

— Richard M. Nixon

40. “Solutions are not the answer.”

— Richard M. Nixon

41. “Yes, I wish I’d done it sooner.”

— Richard M. Nixon

42. “When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.”

— Richard M. Nixon

43. “Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them back.”

— 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. “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

48. “I know you heard what you thought I said, but what I said isn’t what I meant.”

— Richard M. Nixon

49. “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

50. “Tell them to send everything that can fly.”

— Richard M. Nixon