Richard Nixon Quotes Proverbs, and Aphorisms

Updated 2025/05/16

January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994
American
The 37th President of the United States, Lawyer, Politician

Richard Nixon was the 37th President of the United States (1969–1974), known for both significant diplomatic achievements and a historic political scandal. He ended American involvement in the Vietnam War, pursued détente with the Soviet Union, and made a groundbreaking visit to China, reshaping Cold War diplomacy. Domestically, he established the Environmental Protection Agency and advanced civil rights enforcement. However, his presidency was ultimately overshadowed by the Watergate scandal, which exposed abuses of power and led to his resignation—the first and only by a U.S. president. Nixon remains a complex figure: praised for foreign policy vision but condemned for undermining democratic trust.

“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.”
“I can see clearly now… that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.”
“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.”
“If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.”
“Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.”
“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.”
“Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.”
“Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.”
“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.”
“Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.”
“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.”
“I let the American people down.”
“Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?”
“If 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.”
“I played by the rules of politics as I found them.”
“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.”
“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.”
“President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we’re both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.”
“Tonight – to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans – I ask for your support.”
“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.”
“I don’t know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.”
“I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he’s an American child.”
“Voters quickly forget what a man says.”
“Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.”
“I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.”
“A president can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.”
“We are not spending the Federal Government’s money, we are spending the taxpayer’s money, and it must be spent in a way which guarantees his money’s worth and yields the fullest possible benefit to the people being helped.”
“Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
“Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
“Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”
“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.”
“The press is the enemy.”
“Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.”
“The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.”
“You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.”
“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
“Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.”
“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.”
“Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.”
“I have impeached myself by resigning.”
“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.”
“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.”
“There will be no whitewash in the White House.”
“It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it.”
“We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.”
“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.”
“Castro couldn’t even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.”
“Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.”
“I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.”
“Solutions are not the answer.”
“If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.”
“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I earned everything I’ve got.”
“In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.”
“Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.”
“I’ve analyzed the best I can… and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.”
“I believe in the battle—whether it’s the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.”
“The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.”
“Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don’t care what they say, they like it.”
“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.”
“You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.”
“The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.”
“If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.”
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
“People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.”
“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.”
“If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.”
“It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.”
“If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?”
“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.”
“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.”
“I am not a crook.”
“Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.”
“Tell them to send everything that can fly.”
“A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.”
“Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.”
“Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
“When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.”
“Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.”
“As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.”
“I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.”
“A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.”
“My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.”
“What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.”
“Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth—to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.”
“The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.”
“The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community – and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.”
“I gave ’em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.”