Quotes & Sayings About Nixon's Presidency

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency. — Richard M. Nixon

Zeroes are important. A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC, and early humans were using stone tools. — Denis Hayes

If I had a choice, I'd rather be admired less and have my husband tormented less. I'd prefer that people concentrate on a fair assessment of him and his Presidency. — Pat Nixon

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them. — Richard M. Nixon

As a final indignity for the defeated warrior, Vice President Nixon had to preside over the roll call of the Electoral College. "This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated," he told the assembled members of Congress. "I do not think we could have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system." He got a standing ovation. — Nancy Gibbs

When the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thrust him suddenly into the Presidency in April of 1945 at one of the most critical moments of our history, he met that moment with courage and vision. His farsighted leadership in the postwar era has helped ever since to preserve peace and freedom in the world. — Richard M. Nixon

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

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

You have an imperial presidency that makes Richard Nixon look like a boy scout. — Allen West

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. — Richard M. Nixon

By the tie I arrived at the clinic I was typically so demoralized I could barely stand. I was twenty-three years old and I looked like Nixon resigning the presidency. — Daniel Smith

We have to judge presidents not only by the long-term consequences of their actions but also by how they make citizens in their own day feel. One reason that Nixon never succeeded in his comeback campaign is that he had such a negative impact on public trust at the time of his presidency. — David Greenberg

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress - not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment. Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. — Robert Novak

I'm not convinced that Nixon would have survived in office if he'd burned the tapes, but I do believe he would have served out his presidency if he'd never made them in the first place. — Thomas Mallon

Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling. — Tom Brokaw

Historians will look back and say, 'Foreign policy in the Ford presidency was very much dominated by Kissinger, with a kind of continuity from the Nixon period.' Ford is not going to be remembered as a really significant foreign policy maker. — Robert Dallek

Any candidate who'd offered a real possibility of an alternative to Nixon - someone with a different concept of the presidency - could have challenged him and come very close to beating him. — Hunter S. Thompson

Mr. Ford's decision to pardon Richard M. Nixon for any crimes he might have been charged with because of Watergate is seen by many historians as the central event of his 896-day presidency. — Scott Shane

I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning the presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat would defeat President Nixon. I now think that no one could have defeated him in 1972. — George McGovern

Nixon became the first (and to date, only) former Vice President to be elected President (every other Vice President who moved into the Presidency either succeeded upon his predecessor's death, or won election directly from the Vice Presidency). — George Washington

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

Why would anyone want to be President today? The answer is not one of glory, or fame; today the burdens of the office outweigh its privileges. Its not because the Presidency offers a chance to be somebody, but because it offers a chance to do something. — Richard M. Nixon

He never really voice pure, raw outrage to me about Watergate or what it represented. The crimes and abuses were background music. Nixon was trying to subvert not only the law but the Bureau. So Watergate became Felt's instrument to reassert the Bureau's independence and thus its supremacy. In the end, the Bureau was damaged, seriously but not permanently, while Nixon lost much more, maybe everything - the presidency, power, and whatever moral authority he might have had. He was disgraced. But surviving and enduring his hidden life, in contrast and in his own way, Mark Felt won. — Bob Woodward

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You've got to just stand there and take it. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Nixon officials foreshadowed both the historic distinction and seamy underside of the presidency. — Roger Morris

Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency. — Rick Perlstein

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

No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency - a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect. — Richard M. Nixon

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

We all obviously need others to look up to, and be inspirational to us. Ford did a great job as far as putting the presidency back where it belonged, getting the trust back after Nixon. And President Reagan has been one of the most influential presidents. — Steve Garvey

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

Those few days after Kent State were among the darkest of my presidency. — 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