Top 300 Richard M. Nixon Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 7

101. “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

102. “History will treat me fairly. Historians probably won’t, because most historians are on the left.”

— Richard M. Nixon

103. “America will not tolerate being pushed around by anybody, anyplace.”

— Richard M. Nixon

104. “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

105. “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

106. “When I am the candidate, I run the campaign.”

— Richard M. Nixon

107. “Voters quickly forget what a man says.”

— Richard M. Nixon

108. “The average American is just like the child in the family.”

— Richard M. Nixon

109. “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

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

— Richard M. Nixon

111. “You want a wife who is intelligent, but not too intelligent.”

— Richard M. Nixon

112. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

— Richard M. Nixon

113. “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

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

— Richard M. Nixon

115. “Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.”

— Richard M. Nixon

116. “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

117. “I seriously doubt if we will ever have another war. This is probably the very last one.”

— Richard M. Nixon

118. “No failure is final unless you ratify it.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

121. “I’ll speak for the man, or against him, whichever will do him the most good.”

— Richard M. Nixon

122. “We should set goals within the limits of our resources while working to the limits of our powers.”

— Richard M. Nixon

123. “I played by the rules of politics as I found them.”

— Richard M. Nixon

124. “Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much.”

— Richard M. Nixon

125. “While might certainly does not make right, neither does right by itself make might.”

— Richard M. Nixon

126. “I have impeached myself by resigning.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

128. “Writing is the toughest thing I’ve ever done.”

— Richard M. Nixon

129. “The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work.”

— Richard M. Nixon

130. “People should not have to pay for pollution they do not cause.”

— Richard M. Nixon

131. “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

132. “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

133. “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

134. “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

135. “I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.”

— Richard M. Nixon

136. “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

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

— Richard M. Nixon

138. “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

139. “Maybe New York shouldn’t survive. Maybe it should go through a cycle of destruction.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

142. “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

143. “Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren’t for the goddamned people.”

— Richard M. Nixon

144. “God, of course, is the greatest philosopher of all.”

— Richard M. Nixon

145. “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

146. “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

147. “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

148. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

149. “Communism starts with the proposition that there are no universal truths or general truths of human nature.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon