Best Richard Nixon Quotes

No man can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go forward at all is to go forward together.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

A man is not finished when he's defeated; he's finished when he quits.

Defeat doesn't finish a man -- quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.

Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them; and then you destroy yourself.

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.

I made my mistakes, but in all of my years in public life, I have never profited, never profited from public serviceI have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.

A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.

This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.

When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

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

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

The lesson of all history warns us that we should negotiate only when our military superiority is so convincing that we can achieve our objective at the conference table, and deny the aggressor theirs.

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

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

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.

People react to fear, not love --they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.

I often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

But above all, what this Congress can be remembered for is opening the way to a new American revolutiona peaceful revolution in which power was turned back to the peoplein which government at all levels was refreshed and renewed and made truly responsive. This can be a revolution as profound, as far-reaching, as exciting as that first revolution almost 200 years agoand it can mean that just 5 years from now America will enter its third century as a young nation new in spirit, with all the vigor and the freshness with which it began its first century.

When I am the candidate, I run the campaign.

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.

It is not enough just to be for peace. The point is, what can we do about it?

But also out here in this dreary, difficult war, I think history will record that this may have been one of Americas finest hours, because we took a difficult task and we succeeded.

The power of impeachment is, of course, solely entrusted by the Constitution to the House of Representatives. However, the Executive Branch is clearly obligated, both by precedent and by the necessity of the House of Representatives having all of the facts before reaching its decision, to supply relevant information to the Legislative Branch, as it does in aid of other inquiries being conducted by committees of the Congress, to the extent compatible with the public interest.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them-and then you destroy yourself.

Our idea is to create a situation in which those lands to which we have obligations or in which we have interests, if they are ready to fight a fire, should be able to count on us to furnish the hose and water.

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

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.

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.

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

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.

The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision -- whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.

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.

If you think the United States has stood still, who built The largest shopping center in the world?

Nothing matters more to the future of this Nation than insuring that our young men and women learn to believe in themselves and believe in their dreams, and that they develop this capacitythat you develop this capacity, so that you keep it all of your lives. I believe one of Americas most priceless assets is the idealism which motivates the young people of America. My generation has invested all that it has, not only its love but its hope and faith, in yours.

If, when the chips are down, the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-race power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.

I seriously doubt if we will ever have another war. This is probably the very last one.

We are not bent on conquest or on threatening others. But we do have a nuclear umbrella that can protect others, above all the states to which we are allied or in which we have a great national interest.

Once one determines that he or she has a mission in life, that's it's not going to be accomplished without a great deal of pain, and that the rewards in the end may not outweigh the pain --if you recognize historically that always happens, then when it comes, you survive it.

There are these and other great causes that we were elected overwhelmingly to carry forward in November of 1972. And what we were elected to do, we are going to do, and let others wallow in Watergate, we are going to do our job.