F Nixon Quotes & Sayings

Any nation that decides the only way to achieve peace is through peaceful means is a nation that will soon be a piece of another nation. — Richard M. Nixon

I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater. — Bob Gunton

Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order. — Robert Dallek

Nixon's offences had been so long in the past, so much part of a different era that he now seemed like some lovable but bigoted uncle you tolerated at Christmas and Thanksgiving. — Jacob M. Appel

Flying United, to me, is like crossing the Andes in a prison bus. There is no question in my mind that somebody like Pat Nixon personally approves every United stewardess. Nowhere in the Western world is there anything to equal the collection of self-righteous shrews who staff the "friendly skies of United." I do everything possible to avoid that airline, often at considerable cost and personal inconvenience. — Hunter S. Thompson

I want to be sure ... that nothing is done on these veterans. Is that understood? ... Is the word out? That they are not to touch em, they are not to do a thing? ... Get a hold of the district police; they're not to touch them, they're to do nothing: Just let em raise Hell. — Richard M. Nixon

On the morning of Thanksgiving, I would wake up to the home smelling of all good things, wafting upstairs to my room. I would set the table with the fancy silverware and china and hope that my parents and grandmother wouldn't have the annual Thanksgiving fight about Richard Nixon. — Debi Mazar

The fact of the Watergate cover-up is not nearly as interesting as the step into making the cover-up. And when you understand the step, you understand that Richard Nixon lied. That he was a criminal. — Bob Woodward

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business. — Richard M. Nixon

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

An important measure of our true commitment to environmental quality is our dedication to protecting the wilderness and its inhabitants. We must recognize their ecological significance and preserve them as sources of inspiration and education. And we need them as places of quiet refuge and reflection. — Richard M. Nixon

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House. — John F. Kennedy

When you got a guy hanging over the cliff holding on with one hand, you don't want him to get his other hand up there, you want to go ahead and stomp on it — Trot Nixon

Where the hell is Chad? — Richard M. Nixon

Tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support. — Richard M. Nixon

He is your light, you are his darkness

Losing him you will come to me. — Diana Nixon

Me and Don Henley are fast acquaintances now, or something. He actually got on stage and sang with me. — Mojo Nixon

John F. Kennedy, who seized the White House from Richard Nixon in a frenzied campaign that turned a whole generation of young Americans into political junkies, got shot in the head for his efforts, murdered in Dallas by some hapless geek named Oswald who worked for either Castro, the mob, Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, his dominatrix landlady or the odious, degenerate FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The list is long and crazy - maybe Marilyn Monroe's first husband fired those shots from the grassy knoll. Who knows? — Hunter S. Thompson

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? — Richard M. Nixon

John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer. — Robert Dallek

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

Mr. Nixon has, in the last seven days, called me an economic ignoramus, a Pied Piper, and all the rest. I've just confined myself to calling him a Republican. But he says that is getting low. — John F. Kennedy

The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt. — David Pietrusza

I think we're going to have to do better. Mr. Nixon talks about our being the strongest country in the world. I think we are today, but we were far stronger relative to the Communists 5 years ago. And what is of great concern is that the balance of power is in danger of moving with them. They made a breakthrough in missiles and by 1961, '2, and '3, they will be outnumbering us in missiles. — John F. Kennedy

The Nixon years were trying. They honed my judgment for everything I did later on. The experience also illustrated for me the importance of training young lawyers properly. — Fred F. Fielding

Somebody bugged Barry Goldwater's apartment during the 1964 election without it triggering a national trauma. The Johnson administration tapped the phones of Nixon supporters in 1968, and again nothing happened. John F. Kennedy regaled reporters with intimate details from the tax returns of wealthy Republican donors, and none of the reporters saw anything amiss. FDR used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy on opponents of intervention into World War II
and his targets howled without result. If Watergate could so transform the nation's sense of itself, why did those previous abuses, which were equally well known to the press, not do so? Americans did not lose their faith in institutions because of the Watergate scandal; Watergate became a scandal because Americans were losing faith in their institutions. — David Frum

Nixon is fascinating because he's our most alienated president. Everybody felt that they never knew who he was - that's palpable in the histories. His face is so cartoony that he's become this cartoon figure. I never really related to the romanticization of J.F.K., and I knew too much about Reagan to idealize him. Nixon falls in between. — Austin Grossman

It became evident to me that there was a very serious political element at work. I know that the term impeachment was bandied about. I do not believe, however, that the word was used with the ferocity it was more recently or that it was in the Nixon years. — Fred F. Fielding

You could own coins but you couldn't have bars of gold. We were on the gold standard. I think it was Nixon who took us off the gold standard. — Carl Andre

I would not like to be a political leader in Russia. They never know when they're being taped. — Richard M. Nixon

Because of the fact I look a lot younger than I really am, I think, I end up getting these girl-next-door roles. I mean, I'm not a Gemma Arterton type as far as I can tell. — Kimberley Nixon

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

So street-level FBI agents turned secrets into information, and senior FBI leaders brought that information to reporters, to prosecutors, to federal grand juries, and into the public realm. That was the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon's presidency. Without the FBI, the reporters would have been lost. — Tim Weiner

While he was president, it was popular to be a Nixon hater. — Earl Butz

Rave music sounds like an electronic disco version of '30s Universal monster movies. — Mojo Nixon

What we have done with the American Indian is its way as bad as what we imposed on the Negroes. We took a proud and independent race and virtually destroyed them. We have to find ways to bring them back into decent lives in this country. — Richard M. Nixon

Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong. (To Richard Nixon, on the Vietnam War) — Paul Harvey

Surveillance changes history. We know this through examples of corrupt presidents like Nixon. — Mikko Hypponen

I have always tried my best to do what I thought was the right thing at the time. — Pat Nixon

Idealism without pragmatism is impotent. Pragmatism without idealism is meaningless. The key to effective leadership is pragmatic idealism. — Richard M. Nixon

I'm old enough to remember Richard Nixon. They called it the imperial presidency when he was refusing to spend money that Congress had appropriated. — Angus King

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

No failure is final unless you ratify it. — Richard M. Nixon

Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam. — Ron Paul

I went to see President Nixon at the White House. It wasn't difficult to get a meeting because I was heavyweight champion of the world. So I came to Washington and walked around the garden with Nixon, his wife and daughter. I said: I want you to give Ali his licence back. I want to beat him up for you. — Joe Frazier

You cannot win a battle in any arena merely by defending yourself. — Richard M. Nixon

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

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. — Barack Obama

Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits. — Richard M. Nixon

In the general election, Nixon refined Goldwater's southern strategy. Unlike Goldwater, who "ran as a racist candidate," Nixon said, the 1968 GOP nominee campaigned on racial themes without explicitly mentioning race. "Law and order" replaced "states' rights." Pledging to weaken the enforcement of civil rights laws replaced outright opposition to them. Nixon "always couched his views in such a way that a citizen could avoid admitting to himself that he was attracted by a racist appeal," said his top aide, John Ehrlichman. — Ari Berman