Nixon's Quotes & Sayings

It's such a rarity to have women in senior powerful positions. We can name them all. Fact is, women can handle power and handle it well. That's something I'd like a lot more women to understand. — Christine Nixon

The peace we seek in the world is not the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure for generations to come. It is important that we understand both the necessity and the limitations of America's role in maintaining that peace. Unless we in America work to preserve the peace, there will be no peace. Unless we in America work to preserve freedom, there will be no freedom. — Richard M. Nixon

My telephone calls and meetings and decisions were now parts of a prescribed ritual aimed at making peace with the past; his calls, his meetings and his decisions were already the ones that would shape America's future. (On transfer of power to Gerald R Ford) — Richard M. Nixon

The failure of the system to deal quickly was attributable to Nixon's lying, stonewalling and refusal to come clean. So it took 26 months for the final truth to be known. — Bob Woodward

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. — Richard M. Nixon

We've come a long way since Nixon's first visit to China, or Carter's reestablishment of diplomatic relations. — Gary Locke

Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about being born liberal - fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed, — Molly Ivins

After the 1960s and '70s, there were real doubts about whether a mortal man could handle the country's highest office. It had destroyed Johnson, corrupted Nixon, and overwhelmed Ford and Carter. — Nancy Gibbs

The idea of making access to safe abortions harder and more expensive and more difficult, having to travel across state lines - that puts women's health and lives in jeopardy, which is something I think no one wants. — Cynthia Nixon

To be in your child's happy memories tomorrow, you must be in his life today. — Brenda Nixon

Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for
but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him. — Hunter S. Thompson

Nixon's attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form. — Bob Woodward

Humphrey will go into a black neighborhood in Milwaukee and drench the streets with tears while deploring "the enduring tragedy" that life in Nixon's America has visited on "these beautiful little children" - and then act hurt and dismayed when a reporter who covered his Florida campaign reminds him that "In Miami you were talking just a shade to the Left of George Wallace and somewhere to the Right of Mussolini." Hubert — Hunter S. Thompson

Bob Gates is really emblematic of the modern CIA. He joins it in 1968, just a day before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. And, of course, he rises very quickly. In less than six years, he's on the National Security Council staff, at the closing weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency and then on into Gerald Ford. — Roger Morris

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

If parents start to fear that monsters may have been let loose in their children's bedrooms, it may be because their children are the monsters. Consider what kind of world they are growing up in. It can all end tomorrow. Material progress no longer seems as closely meshed with human evolution as it once was; the anticipated leap into the future may not take place in a time or manner that can be so easily predicted. However, by now everyone from Richard Nixon to Chairman Mao knows that the only way to force the evolutionary curve to bend your way is by throwing larger numbers at it. — Ken Hollings

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. — Hunter S. Thompson

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

National 21 drinking age, huh, what do you think about that? A bunch of malarkey, whatever malarkey is, man, it's a whole bunch of it. — Mojo Nixon

McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President? — Hunter S. Thompson

In the post-Watergate atmosphere of 1975 and 1976, the just-plain-folks personalities of both Ford and Carter seemed the perfect antidote to Nixon's arrogant, isolated presidency. But as alert history-minded readers know, Ford and Carter were both rebuffed by voters in their efforts to hold on to the presidency. — Jeff Greenfield

Without the tape-recorded evidence demonstrating irrefutably, in Nixon's own voice, his knowledge of and active involvement in obstruction of justice, it is likely that Nixon would have escaped impeachment and removal from office. — Richard Ben-Veniste

Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, 'I am not a crook.' Jimmy Carter says, 'I have lusted after women in my heart.' President Reagan says, 'I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope. — Art Buchwald

Cancer is really hard to go through and it's really hard to watch someone you love go through, and I know because I have been on both sides of the equation. — Cynthia Nixon

The defining characteristic of today's intellectual and media elite is that it swims merrily in a sea of fantasy. The world of television is essentially a fantasy world, and television is today's [1980's] common denominator of communication, today's unifying American experience. This has frightening implications for the future. Ideas that fit on bumper stickers are not ideas at all, they simply are attitudes. And attitudinizing is no substitute for analysis. Unfortunately, too often television is to news as bumper stickers are to philosophy, and this has a corrosive effect on public understanding of those issues on which national survival may depend. — Richard M. Nixon

There's a basic law, Klein's second, or third, or fourth law of politics in the TV age, which is warm always beats cold, with the exception of Richard Nixon. The nicer guy usually wins. — Joe Klein

In 1959, Vice-President Nixon, speaking to members of California's Commonwealth Club, was asked if he'd like to see the parties undergo an ideological realignment - the sort that has since taken place - and he replied, "I think it would be a great tragedy ... if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line." He continued, "I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion." Therefore, "when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people. — Jeffrey Frank

In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in 'The Crucible' and Nina in 'The Seagull,' and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That's what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don't think I have a very modern-looking face. — Kimberley Nixon

Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to your mind is an image, a picture of face, (in Einstein's case, a photograph of a face). Of words, nothing will come to mind. This is the difference between thinking in a word-centered culture and thinking in an image-centered culture. — Neil Postman

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was right when he claimed, 'In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.' Political activists are more inclined, though, to heed an observation from Richard Nixon: 'People react to fear, not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true.' That principle, which guided the late president's political strategy throughout his career, is the sine qua non of contemporary political campaigning. Marketers of products and services ranging from car alarms to TV news programs have taken it to heart as well.

The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes. — Barry Glassner

Republican strategist Kevin Phillips is often credited for offering the most influential argument in favor of a race-based strategy for Republican political dominance in the South. He argued in The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969, that Nixon's successful presidential election campaign could point the way toward long-term political realignment and the building of a new Republican majority, if Republicans continued to campaign primarily on the basis of racial issues, using coded antiblack rhetoric.54 He argued that Southern white Democrats had become so angered and alienated by the Democratic Party's support for civil rights reforms, such as desegregation and busing, that those voters could be easily persuaded to switch parties if those racial resentments could be maintained. — Michelle Alexander

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides. — Harry S. Truman

I was fourteen when Kissinger made his secret trip to China, and then there was subsequently Nixon's trip to China, and I was very much seized with an interest in China. — John Pomfret

Nixon's grand mistake was his failure to understand that Americans are forgiving, and if he had admitted error early and apologized to the country, he would have escaped. — Bob Woodward

Covering Richard Nixon's triumphant run in 1968 turned out to be my last major assignment as a general correspondent for CBS News. In September of that year, '60 Minutes' made its debut and I began the best, the most fulfilling job a reporter could imagine. — Mike Wallace

First of all, we were never not speaking. It's gotten so blown out of proportion. It was a very straightforward difference of opinion. I think because we were so private and refused to talk about it, these stories just got out of control. — Julie Nixon Eisenhower

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

I don't think the American people had a clear picture of either Nixon or me. I think they thought that Nixon was a strong, decisive, tough-minded guy and that I was an idealist and antiwar guy who might not attach enough significance to the security of the country. The truth is, I was the guy with the war record, and my opposition to Vietnam was because I was interested in the nation's well-being. — George McGovern

I've got six brothers, so I grew up with all boys, then I moved in with three girls, and the differences were incredible. Living in a very feminine house threw me a bit. The bathroom was unbelievable; it was like a chemist's. — Kimberley Nixon

Women's health needs to be front and center - it often isn't, but it needs to be. — Cynthia 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

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president. — Hunter S. Thompson

Few dramas in American political history remain more riveting than that of Nixon's exit and Mr. Ford's reaction, at first halting and then decisive, to the looming possibility of a former president on criminal trial for months on end. — Scott Shane

The Soviet Union began by banishing God. The United States began as a community of people who wanted to worship God as they chose ... Man does not live by bread alone. Those in the United States whose desire to create a strictly secular society is as strong as Lenin's was should study this Cold War lesson closely. Communism was defeated by an alliance spearheaded by 'one nation under God.' — Richard M. Nixon

As long as I'm sitting in the chair, there's not going to be any Jew appointed to that court. [No Jew] can be right on the criminal-law issue. — Richard M. Nixon

I'm really curious about the memory of Nixon for people who grew up under Clinton. What do people remember of him? In his day, the definition of a conservative right-wing president is more like a centrist in our own time. He's also one of our funnier presidents - just a really good character to write about. — Austin Grossman

Nixon's full term was one of the most successful in U.S. history, which is why he was re-elected by the largest plurality in the country's history. — Conrad Black

We want accountability. We just buried a president [President Gerald Ford] who did not hold another president [President Nixon] accountable for war crimes and that's why we're in Iraq right now. Our leaders who get us into these messes are the ones who need to be held accountable. — Cindy Sheehan

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

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. — Richard M. Nixon

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I'm taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible. — Harry S. Truman

I feel that between my experience and my mother's, breast cancer is a little bit like someone who lives next door. I know what that person looks like and what their daily habits are. — Cynthia Nixon

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

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

A lot of my background is in theatre, so when you're on location, and the wind is really blowing, it's raining, and you've got mud all over you, it really keeps you on your toes. — Kimberley Nixon

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was 'a basket case' before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. — William M. Arkin

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

More than four decades after Nixon met Mao, the relationship between the U.S. and China has reached a pivotal moment. To date, even as China has become more powerful and present in our lives, Americans have generally found it to be an unsatisfying 'enemy.' — Evan Osnos

Richard Nixon's conversation was loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides. — Rick Perlstein

That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up. — Andrew Sullivan

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

Having a baby is part of a woman's life, and it is surely a great waste to be afraid of life. — Joan Lowery Nixon

They say it's the responsibility of the media to look at government - especially the President - with a microscope. I don't argue with that, but when they use a proctoscope, it's going too far. — Richard M. Nixon

Debbie Gibson is pregnant with my two headed love child, it's a big foot baby all covered in fur. — Mojo Nixon

Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child's life - the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you'll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. — Jeff Greenfield

The script was classic Joe Eszterhas, intelligent, steamy and provocative. At one time, Eszterhas was Hollywood's highest paid writer, illiterate rock and roll bad boy whose 14 films glorified sex, drugsa nd cigarettes. Eszterhas also fought publicly with producers and politicians. In 1995 he argued that some of the misdeeds of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations were more obscene than anything in an "R" rated movie. — David Shuster

HST: Wasn't there a Harris Poll that showed that only 3 percent of the electorate considered the Watergate thing important?
McGovern: Yeah. That's right. Mistakes that we made seemed to be much more costly. I don't know why, but they were. I felt it at the time, that we were being hurt by every mistake we made, whereas the most horrendous kind of things on the other side somehow seemed to--because, I suppose, of the great prestige of the White House, the President's shrewdness in not showing himself to the press or the public--they were able to get away with things that we got pounded for. — Hunter S. Thompson

I'm quite contradictory - a bit OCD, but quite untidy. I have piles of stuff everywhere, but they make sense to me. And I'll find the one thing in the room that's my boyfriend's, and complain about him leaving it out. — Kimberley Nixon

George McGovern, for all his mistakes ... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon, — Hunter S. Thompson

I became a Republican in the summer of 1972. I was involved in running President Nixon's re-election campaign in California and became part of his administration at the start of his second term. — Ed Rollins

Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. — Hunter S. Thompson

The president, apparently, was so totally unaware of where his foreign policy was that he had to appoint a distinguished commission to help him locate it, and when the commissioners called him in to testify, he told them, essentially, that he couldn't remember what it looked like. Now, if Richard Nixon had claimed something like that you would at least have had the comfort of knowing he was lying. You could trust Nixon that way. But with this president, you have this nagging feeling that he's telling the truth. — Dave Barry

We seek friendly relations with all nations. Any nation can be our friend without being any other nation's enemy. — Richard M. Nixon

Vanity Fair magazine reports that former President Clinton and Al Gore haven't spoken to each other since George W. Bush's inauguration. Not only that, Bill and his wife, Hillary, haven't spoken since Richard Nixon's inauguration. — Conan O'Brien

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn ... pauses briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness ... towards the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue, and trying desperately to remember which one of those fore hundred identical balconies is the one outside of Martha Mitchell's apartment ... Ah ... Nightmares, nightmares. But I was only kidding. The President of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season. — Hunter S. Thompson

As you know, the separation of church and state is not subject to discussion or alteration. Under our Constitution no church or religion can be supported by the U.S. Government. We maintain freedom of religion so that an American can either worship in the church of his choice or choose to go to no church at all. — Richard M. Nixon

The people's right to change what does not work is one of the greatest principles in our system of government — Richard M. Nixon

Funny that all of Nixon's crimes - anonymous campaign cash, wiretapping, undeclared wars - are all legal now. Discuss. — Bill Maher

Young George spent more money on one day of his Inauguration Ceremonies than Richard Nixon did on his whole Campaign in 1972 - and Nixon was crucified as a Criminal Spendthrift with the ethics of a snake. — Hunter S. Thompson

There's more to getting to where you're going then just knowing there's a road. — Joan Lowery Nixon

He knew viewers made snap judgments about likability in the first seven seconds. Plus, besides relating to the audience, newcomers and rehabilitated personalities were more likely to be loyal. From his earliest days with Mike Douglas and Nixon, Ailes excelled when he created his own talent, molding and shaping them in his image. "If I have any ability," he later remarked, "it's probably to find talented people and set up a structure that they can work in. — Anonymous

The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan's collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow - and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked - people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American. — Ken Follett

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

Life. It's like a snow globe. From the outside it can look pretty, idyllic, calm. But in reality it's a sham. Look closely inside and you'll see everything is fake, plastic, very small and very, very meaningless. And then every now and again some bastard comes along and shakes the whole lot up. — Keith Nixon

By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream. — Hunter S. Thompson

I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon's Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself. — Bob Woodward

The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President. — Hunter S. Thompson

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know — Neil Young

I have a PC because I don't know how to use a Mac. Actors always have Macs with them, and when I try to use someone else's, I can't get the hang of it. It's very strange; I don't like it. — Kimberley Nixon

A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life's mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which otherwise would have remained dormant. — Richard M. Nixon

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin. — Hunter S. Thompson

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

I had always sort of done dramatic things, and I love them; it's my background. But when I think about 'Fresh Meat,' I just think about the cast and the crew that we had ... we just had a great time. — Kimberley Nixon

In the background was the conclusion of Nixon's National Security Council that if the United States could not control Latin America, it could not expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world. — Noam Chomsky

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

Another time Nixon asked Butterfield, "Are these goddamn cabinet members that we invite to the various social functions at the White House, do they get around and talk to people?" There were usually a handful of cabinet members at state dinners, receptions or the Sunday worship service. "That should be one of their duties," Nixon said. "Honestly, Mr. President," Butterfield replied, "no, they don't get around that much and I don't think they see making conversation with other guests is one of their duties." "Well," Nixon said, "who does? Who's the best?" "Oh, clearly the best is George Bush . . . I've heard him many times and I've watched him. 'Hi, I'm George Bush, our United Nations representative.' And he would chat with people." "Oh, yeah, Bush. He would be good at that." Nixon then went into a thoughtful repose and added, "God knows I could never do that. — Bob Woodward

Even though we know the origin of diseases, panic sweeps. It's one thing that frightens us, because it's your health and your body - it's more like a tangible threat; it's not like a foreign enemy you can fight. That was really what was uppermost to many of us whilst making 'Black Death.' — Kimberley Nixon

I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there. — Sammy Davis Jr.

Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet. — Barack Obama

I couldn't help but be struck that this guy I had thought was the embodiment of everything wrong with American politics, a lot of his domestic policy was mind-numbingly, head-spinningly to the left of Obama's. It was under Nixon that the EPA was created. It was under Nixon that OSHA was created. Under Nixon that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed. — Harry Shearer