Quotes By Richard M. Nixon

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.

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.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

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

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.

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.

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.

When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.

You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

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

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.

Castro couldn't even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.

I am not a crook.

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.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.