Top 300 Richard M. Nixon Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “What was Watergate? A little bugging!”

— Richard M. Nixon

252. “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

253. “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

254. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

255. “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

256. “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

257. “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

258. “I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.”

— Richard M. Nixon

259. “What we do with this peace-whether we preserve it and defend it, or whether we lose it and let it slip away-will be the measure of our worthiness of the spirit and sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives in two World Wars, Korea, and in Vietnam.”

— Richard M. Nixon

260. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

261. “There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I’m not like that I never shoot blanks.”

— Richard M. Nixon

262. “Screw State! State’s always on the side of the blacks. The hell with them!”

— Richard M. Nixon

263. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

264. “Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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 “Because the public lands belong to all Americans, this 1872 Mining Act should be repealed...”

— Richard M. Nixon

266. “My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don’t think Kennedy should have done it. I don’t think Johnson should have done it, and I don’t think we should have done it.”

— Richard M. Nixon

267. “We are not spending the Federal Government’s money, we are spending the taxpayer’s money, and it must be spent n a way which guarantees his money’s worth and yields the fullest possible benefit to the people being helped.”

— Richard M. Nixon

268. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

269. “The only time in the history of the world that we have had any extended periods of peace is when there has been a balance of power. It is when one nation becomes infinitely more powerful in relation to its potential competitors that the danger of war arises.”

— Richard M. Nixon

270. “Lyndon Johnson rose above the doubt and fear to hold this Nation on course until we rediscovered our faith in ourselves.”

— Richard M. Nixon

271. “The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.”

— Richard M. Nixon

272. “In our own lives, let each of us asknot just what government will do for me, but what can I do for myself?”

— Richard M. Nixon

273. “My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

275. “Since I have never one a debate let me tell you how not to lose one.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

277. “We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.”

— Richard M. Nixon

278. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

279. “The student who invades an administration building, roughs up a dean, rifles the files and issues ‘non-negotiable demands’ may have some of his demands met by a permissive university administration. But the greater his ‘victory’ the more he will have undermined the security of his own rights.”

— Richard M. Nixon

280. “It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.”

— Richard M. Nixon

281. “I knew if I continued to look around it would be difficult for me to contain my own emotions. So I turned away from the red eyes of the crowd and looked only at the red eye of the camera, talking to all the nation.”

— Richard M. Nixon

282. “Once one determines that he or she has a mission in life, that’s it’s not...”

— Richard M. Nixon

283. “The people’s right to change what does not work is one of the greatest principles in our system of government.”

— Richard M. Nixon

284. “I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana, I mean one that just tears the ass out of them. You know, its a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish.”

— Richard M. Nixon

285. “Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty.”

— Richard M. Nixon

286. “The bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time.”

— Richard M. Nixon

287. “If, when the chips are down, the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

— Richard M. Nixon

288. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the governments knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO’s at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject!”

— Richard M. Nixon

289. “Television is to news as bumperstickers are to philosophy.”

— Richard M. Nixon

290. “Castro couldn’t even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.”

— Richard M. Nixon

291. “You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.”

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

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

— Richard M. Nixon

294. “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...”

— Richard M. Nixon

295. “We must maintain the integrity of the White House, and that integrity must be real, not transparent. There can be no whitewash at the White House.”

— Richard M. Nixon

296. “I never leave a game before the last pitch, because in baseball, as in life and especially politics, you never know what will happen.”

— Richard M. Nixon

297. “Now that all the members of the press are so delighted I lost, I’d like to make a statement. As I leave you I want you to know -just think how much you’ll be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

— Richard M. Nixon

298. “The lesson of all history warns us that we should negotiate only when our military superiority is so convincing that we can achieve our objective at the conference table, and deny the aggressor theirs.”

— Richard M. Nixon

299. “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.”

— Richard M. Nixon

300. “I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don’t have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.”

— Richard M. Nixon