A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

The President is always abused. If he isn't, he isn't doing anything.

My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

A President cannot always be popular.

The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's.

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don't ever apologize for anything.

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.

I had faith in Israel before it was established, I have in it now. I believe it has a glorious future before it - not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

The reward of suffering is experience.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.

When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn't for you. It's for the Presidency.

Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me.

The atom bomb was no "great decision." It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.

It sure is hell to be president.

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

If you can't convince them, confuse them.

If I hadn't been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.

I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.

You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.

A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

It's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em. It's an old political trick. But this time it won't work.

If I'd known how much packing I'd have to do, I'd have run again.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

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.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.