Richard Nixon: Trending quotes

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Richard Nixon: 178 quotes1 like

“But it's not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time — it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco. Decorators. They got to do something. But we don't have to glorify it. You know one of the reasons fashions have made women look so terrible is because the goddamned designers hate women. Designers taking it out on the women. Now they're trying to get some more sexy things coming on again.”

Richard Nixon

Tapes from 1971 as presented in "All the Philosopher King's Men" by James Warren in Harper's Magazine (February 2000)
1970s, Tape transcripts (1971)

“And I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States.”

Richard Nixon

State of the Union Address (30 January 1974) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4327 1970s

“The average American is just like the child in the family. You give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something. He is going to do something. If, on the other hand, you make him completely dependent and pamper him and cater to him too much, you are going to make him soft, spoiled and eventually a very weak individual.”

Richard Nixon

Post-re-election interview with Garnett D. Horner, The Washington Star-News (9 November 1972), p. 1.
1970s

“Just as we respect the right of each nation to determine its own future, we also recognize the responsibility of each nation to secure its own future.
Just as America's role is indispensable in preserving the world's peace, so is each nation's role indispensable in preserving its own peace.
Together with the rest of the world, let us resolve to move forward from the beginnings we have made. Let us continue to bring down the walls of hostility which have divided the world for too long, and to build in their place bridges of understanding — so that despite profound differences between systems of government, the people of the world can be friends.”

Richard Nixon

1970s, Second Inaugural Address (1973)

“I want to tell you that I was so damn mad when that Supreme Court had to come down. First, I didn't like the decision. Unbelievable, wasn't it? You know, those clowns we got on there, I tell you, I hope I outlive the bastards.”

Richard Nixon

After the US Supreme Court ruling in New York Times Co. v. United States (The Pentagon Papers Case).
2000s

“Now, when individuals read the entire transcript of the [March] 21st [1973] meeting, or hear the entire tape, where we discussed all these options, they may reach different interpretations, but I know what I meant, and I know also what I did.”

Richard Nixon

News Conference (6 March 1974) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=4377 1970s

“I don't think women should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic and emotional.”

Richard Nixon

Quoted in John Boertlein, Presidential Confidential (2010), p. 293
2000s

“What it is, is it’s the insecurity. It’s the latent insecurity. Most Jewish people are insecure. And that’s why they have to prove things.”

Richard Nixon

Conversation on Jewish aides as quoted on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/1_INFERIORITY.mp3 "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney, New York Times (10 December 2010) 1970s

“Nowdays, If a news report does not tie up loose ends as neatly as 'The A Team', it is considered a flop.”

Richard Nixon

From In The Arena (1990)
1990s

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape.”

Richard Nixon

Tape 407, Conversation No. 407-18, 32:08 http://nixon.archives.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape407/407-018.mp3 On Nixon Tapes, Ambivalence Over Abortion, Not Watergate http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html by Charlie Savage, The New York Times, June 23 2009, retrieved June 23 2009 1970s, Tape transcripts (1973)

“I have never been a quitter.”

Richard Nixon

Resignation Address to the Union (8 August 1974)
1970s

“Men of intellectual and moral eminence who encourage public disobedience of the law are responsible for the acts of those who inevitably follow their counsel: the poor, the ignorant and the impressionable. For example, to the professor objecting to de facto segregation, it may be crystal clear where civil disobedience may begin and where it must end. But the boundaries have become fluid to his students and other listeners. Today in the urban slums, the limits of responsible action are all but invisible.”

Richard Nixon

1960s, What Has Happened to America? (1967)

“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York. He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on. My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years.
What has to happen is they have to be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”

Richard Nixon

Conversation with secretary Rose Mary Woods on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/3_VIETNAM.mp3 on tapes recorded February-March 1973; as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney, New York Times (10 December 2010); with sound recording http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/4_BLACKS.mp3. 1970s

“What are our schools for if not for indoctrination against communism?”

Richard Nixon

Speech http://books.google.com/?id=k3caAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22What+are+our+schools+for+if+not+for+indoctrination+against+communism%22 before a meeting of San Diego educators during the 1962 gubernatorial election. 2000s

“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic.”

Richard Nixon

No More Vietnams (1987).
1980s

“There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means.”

Richard Nixon

Speech on the October Crisis (October 1970), quoted in Louis, Fournier, F.L.Q: The Anatomy of an Underground movement (Toronto: NC Press Limited, 1984), p. 256
1970s

“Nixon: I still think we ought to take the North Vietnamese dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
Nixon: No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?. I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.”

Richard Nixon

In conversation with Henry Kissinger regarding Vietnam, as quoted in Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. (2002) by Daniel Ellsberg p. 418 ISBN 0-670-03030-9
2000s

“This administration has proved that it is utterly incapable of cleaning out the corruption which has completely eroded it and reestablishing the confidence and faith of the American people in the morality and honesty of their government employees.”

Richard Nixon

Nixon as Senator, speaking of the Truman administration in 1951, as quoted in Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1992), p. 338 http://www.findbookprices.com/detail/0803893477 1950s

“The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.”

Richard Nixon

1960s, First Inaugural Address (1969)

“If you are going to lie, you go to jail for the lie rather than the crime. So believe me, don't ever lie.”

Richard Nixon

To John Dean in April 1973 http://books.google.com/?id=JpRAAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22If+you+are+going+to+lie+you+go+to+jail+for+the+lie+rather+than+the+crime+So+believe+me+don't+ever+lie%22&pg=PA42. Dean was due to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee, which he did on 25 June 1973. 1970s