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.

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Richard M. Nixon's quotes

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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

President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we're both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

Castro couldn't even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.

Richard M. Nixon

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

Richard M. Nixon

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

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

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

Richard M. Nixon

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

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.

Richard M. Nixon

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

The press is the enemy.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. 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

Solutions are not the answer.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

I have impeached myself by resigning.

Richard M. Nixon

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

Tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Richard M. Nixon

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

Richard M. Nixon

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don't care what they say, they like it.

Richard M. Nixon

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

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