Top 300 Richard M. Nixon Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

202. “In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.”

— Richard M. Nixon

203. “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

204. “Communism denies God, enslaves men, and destroys justice.”

— Richard M. Nixon

205. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

207. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

208. “Mr. Stevenson has a degree alright-a PhD from the Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment.”

— Richard M. Nixon

209. “The peace we seek to win is not victory over any other people, but the peace that comes “with healing in its wings;” with compassion for those who have suffered; with understanding for those who have opposed us; with the opportunity for all the peoples of this Earth to choose their own destiny.”

— Richard M. Nixon

210. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

211. “The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.”

— Richard M. Nixon

212. “Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.”

— Richard M. Nixon

213. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

214. “You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.”

— Richard M. Nixon

215. “And I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States.”

— Richard M. Nixon

216. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

217. “Let me just say this, and I want to say this to the televison audience: I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service.”

— Richard M. Nixon

218. “Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.”

— Richard M. Nixon

219. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

220. “They say, “Gee, you look great.” That means they thought you looked like hell before.”

— Richard M. Nixon

221. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

222. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

223. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

224. “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.”

— Richard M. Nixon

225. “I’ve never canceled a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons or editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have any newspapers or magazines to read.”

— Richard M. Nixon

226. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

227. “Why would anyone want to be President today? The answer is not one of glory, or fame; today the burdens of the office outweigh its privileges. Its not because the Presidency offers a chance to be somebody, but because it offers a chance to do something.”

— Richard M. Nixon

228. “At home, we must reject the mistaken notion – a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long – that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.”

— Richard M. Nixon

229. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

230. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

231. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

232. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

233. “But also out here in this dreary, difficult war, I think history will record that this may have been one of Americas finest hours, because we took a difficult task and we succeeded.”

— Richard M. Nixon

234. “I believe in the battle-whether it’s the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.”

— Richard M. Nixon

235. “Well, I’m not a crook.”

— Richard M. Nixon

236. “The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

238. “As our cities and suburbs relentlessly expand, those priceless open spaces needed for recreation areas accessible to their people are swallowed up-often forever. Unless we preserve these spaces while they are still available, we will have none to preserve.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

240. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

241. “As we work to expand our supplies of energy, we should also recognize that we must balance those efforts with our concern to preserve our environment. In the past, as we have sought new energy sources, we have too often damaged or despoiled our land.”

— Richard M. Nixon

242. “With all our differences, whenever we are confronted with a threat to our security we are not then Republicans or Democrats but Americans; we are not then the fifty states but the United States.”

— Richard M. Nixon

243. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

244. “What was Watergate? A little bugging!”

— Richard M. Nixon

245. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

246. “When I retire I’m going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.”

— Richard M. Nixon

247. “Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.”

— Richard M. Nixon

248. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

249. “If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon