Richard M. Nixon Quotes

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

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

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

The Jewish cabal is out to get me.

You find out who your true friends are not when you are on top of the world, but when the world is on top of you.

Once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation is doomed to mediocrity.

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion - a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long - that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

People are persuaded by reason, but moved by emotion; [the leader] must both persuade them and move them.

Mr. Stevenson has a degree alright-a PhD from the Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment.

If I had feelings, I probably wouldn’t have even survived.

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

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

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

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

You want a wife who is intelligent, but not too intelligent.

I refuse to make a decision that somebody else can make. The first rule of leadership is to save yourself for the big decision. Don't allow your mind to become cluttered.

You cannot win a battle in any arena merely by defending yourself.

Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does.

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

I believe in the battle-whether it's the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

I've never left a game before it ended. You never know when there could be a big turnaround in the game.

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

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

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

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

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

As long as I'm sitting in the chair, there's not going to be any Jew appointed to that court. No Jew can be right on the criminal-law issue.

If the President does it, it can't be illegal.

I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes.

I'm not a lovable man.

I believe in building bridges, but we should only build our end of the bridge.

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

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.

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

I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice.

Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted: peace is improvisation.

God, of course, is the greatest philosopher of all.

Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty.

Never be too proud to go onto your knees before God.

The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work.

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

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

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.

Don't try to take on a new personality; it doesn't work.

Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

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.

I got into a few games after they were hopelessly won or hopelessly lost, you know, when they put the substitutes in, and finally the water boy, and then me. That is the way it worked.

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.

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.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.