Top 393 Quotes & Sayings by Richard M. Nixon

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American president Richard M. Nixon.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. He was a member of the Republican Party who previously served as a representative and senator from California and was the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961. His five years in the White House saw reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the first manned Moon landings, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early, when he became the only president to resign from office, following the Watergate scandal.

American - President | January 9, 1913 - April 22, 1994

Source: Wikipedia

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

Richard M. Nixon

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

Richard M. Nixon

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

Solutions are not the answer.

Richard M. Nixon

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

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

I don't know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.

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

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.

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

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

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

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

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

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

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

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.

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

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.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

The Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.

Richard M. Nixon

I am not a crook.

Richard M. Nixon

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I earned everything I've got.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

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

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

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

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

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

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

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child.

Richard M. Nixon

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.

Richard M. Nixon

I let the American people down.

Richard M. Nixon

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

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

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

Richard M. Nixon

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, 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 press is the enemy.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community - and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.

Richard M. Nixon

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

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

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

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 finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Richard M. Nixon

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

Richard M. Nixon

Top 393 Quotes & Sayings by Richard M. Nixon

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