Richard M. Nixon the President, biography, facts and quotes

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

"Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too"

"The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker"

"I am not a crook"

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

"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"

"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"

"Tell them to send everything that can fly"

"Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects"

"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"

"Well, I screwed it up real good, didn't I?"

"The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them"

"You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character"

"The press is the enemy"

"Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain"

"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"

"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now"

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

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

"I let the American people down"

"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 have impeached myself by resigning"

"Voters quickly forget what a man says"

"Solutions are not the answer"

"Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"My concern today is not with the length of a person's hair but with his conduct"

"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"

"Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"I've analyzed the best I can... and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course"

"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"

"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"

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

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy"

"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"

Born as	Richard Milhous Nixon
Occup.	President
From	USA
Born	January 9, 1913 Yorba Linda, California, US
Died	April 22, 1994 New York City, New York, US
Aged	81 years

Richard M. Nixon Biography

68 Famous quotes by Richard M. Nixon