Quotes / Richard Nixon

Quotes from Nixon

Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out... You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies.

— Transcripts from White House tapes, 1971

People react to fear, not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true.

— Quoted by William Safire, Before the Fall, prologue (1975).

1 in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile...Make the economy scream.

— Plan of attack against the Socialist government of Chile, transcripted by CIA director Richard Helms

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

— Nixon takes his ball and goes home, California gubernatorial concession speech (1962)

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

— Televised press conference with the Associated Press, 1973

Well, when the President does it that means that it is not illegal.

— Frost/Nixon interviews, 1977

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

— Farewell speech following his resignation from the Presidency, White House East Room (8.9.74)

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.

— to H.R. Haldeman in 1968, shortly before taking office

President Nixon: When the Chairman says he voted for me he voted for the lesser of two evils.
Chairman Mao: I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister [Edward] Heath is also to the right.
President Nixon: And General de Gaulle.
Chairman Mao: De Gaulle is a different question. They also say the Christian Democratic Party of West Germany is also to the right. I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power.
President Nixon: I think the important thing to note is that in America, at least this time, those on the right can do what those on the left talk about.

— Transcript of Exchange during Nixon's visit to China

Quotes about Nixon

Nixon's the One

— Nixon's campaign motto, later used by critics for ironic purposes

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.

— Harry Truman

The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment.

— James D. St. Clair, defense counsel in United States v. Nixon

"I may not know much, but I know chicken sh*t from chicken salad…He’s like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and run backwards. You’ll see – he’ll do something wrong in the end. He always does."

— Lyndon Johnson as he prepared to turn over the White House to Nixon in 1969

The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election.

— Gerald Ford

Can you imagine what this man would have been if someone loved him?

— Henry Kissinger

But greatness was always suspected in Churchill, de Gaulle, Lincoln. One test of it was their prose, a resonance to all they said or wrote, even in defeat. Men do not sound like that if they have nothing in them. And the Nixon on the podium that morning, so exhaustively prepared, turning on well-oiled hinges from question to question, pointing to all his old friend-foes of the press as he stood there, arm lifted from his slight Ed Sullivan humpback, his eyes testing response to each joke before his mouth gave its belated jerk, eyes and mouth in perpetual counterpoint playing against each other—this Nixon was the soul of hard-earned competence, but he had no touch of greatness.

— Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes

Whatever Nixon's impulses to engage in political combat, which had been so much a part of his public career and reflected his true instincts, he understood that Americans wanted their president to shun polemics as much as possible and unify rather than divide the country. Nixon was overwhelmingly self-interested, but he was someone who shrewdly presented himself as a wise president always putting the larger national interest ahead of self-serving ends.

— Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power

How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?

— Historian James MacGregor Burns

I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.

— Pauline Kael

I have tender feelings for Nixon, because everybody has warm feelings about their childhood. Actually, I didn't like the Watergate trials 'cause they interrupted The Munsters... Nixon was the last liberal president. He supported women's rights, the environment, ending the draft, youth involvement, and now he's the boogeyman? [John] Kerry couldn't even run on that today.

— Stephen Colbert

Oh, he's just like all of us. A mass of neuroses. Insecure, frightened, arrogant...terribly paranoid, which for an actor is really easy to play. You don't have to research that at all...And in the end, someone who could — I've said this before but I think it's appropriate — someone who could only climb up so many rungs of the ladder, and then when he would get to a certain level on that ladder, it would begin to be what I would call 'the winds of terror.' It would be too much for him...And I think he actually passed them once, been on the top rung, became the president of the United States, and whatever the voices in his head were that ruled his life, they said: "You know, Dick, you don't belong up here..."

— Frank Langella, who played Nixon in the movie Frost/Nixon

As for support, we may recall the last major program for helping families at the level of survival was under Richard Nixon. In many respects Nixon was the last liberal president.

— Noam Chomsky

Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts.

— A bumper sticker from around the time of the Watergate scandal. Massachusetts was the only state that Nixon failed to carry during his landslide re-election in 1972.

I don't know what the President believes. Maybe he doesn't believe in anything.

— George Romney (Mitt's dad), Governor of Michigan and Cabinet member

It struck me from time to time that Nixon, as a character, would have been so easy to fix, in the sense of removing these rather petty flaws. And yet, I think it's also true that if you did this, you would probably have removed that very inner core of insecurity that led to his drive. A secure Nixon almost surely, in my view, would never have been President of the United States at all.

— Elliot Richardson, Cabinet member

(Nixon) represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close....

— Hunter S. Thompson

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

— from Hunter S. Thompson's obituary of Nixon.

It is worth reminding yourself once in a while just how deeply weird Nixon was. He’s been rendered so silly by a lifetime of cartoonish impressions, it’s genuinely unsettling to watch him make unyielding eye contact while saying "I believe that forced integration of the suburbs is not in the national interest" like a cold robot powered by racism. All I’m saying is, it really says something that the most human version of Nixon is the one where he’s a cartoon head in a jar.

— John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Nixon in fiction

"When [the American people] look at you, they see who they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are."

— Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) to a portrait of John F. Kennedy, Nixon

Do you remember
Your President Nixon?
Do you remember
The bills you have to pay
For even yesterday?!

—David Bowie, "Young Americans"

Nixon was a sweating, filthy liar...

— Jonathan Coulton, "The Presidents"

The love of Richard Nixon
Death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon
Yeah they all betrayed you
People forget China
And your war on cancer
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too

— Manic Street Preachers, "The Love of Richard Nixon"

Oh here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Richard Nixon, find yourself another country to be part of

— Phil Ochs, "Here's to the State of Richard Nixon"

And Richard Nixon’s on his knees he’s sent so many overseas
He'd like to know if you and me could help him in some way
A little camouflage and glue to mask the evil that men do
A small diversion caused by two
Pale kids come to play
And we heard Richard Nixon say, "Welcome to the USA"

— Elton John, "Postcards from Richard Nixon'", about Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin first arriving in L.A. and providing escapism for American music listeners during the Nixon administration.

We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you'll do
Though much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you
But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
'Cause if you really want to hear our views
You haven't done nothin'

— Stevie Wonder, "You Haven't Done Nothin'", written about Nixon following his resignation.

Hospitals have made him cry
But there's always a freeway in his eye
Though his beach just got too crowded for his stroll
Roads stretch out like healthy veins
And wild gift horses strain the reins
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul
Even Richard Nixon has got soul

— Neil Young, "Campaigner"

Who's kicking who around now?!

— Giant cyborg Nixon, Futurama

ARRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

— Ordinary disembodied Nixon, Futurama

I hope this puts to bed that crazy stuff you had going about Leland Monroe. What were you thinking, Phelps? You'll be calling Richard Nixon a crook next!

— Captain Lachlan McKelty, L.A. Noire

River Song: Richard Milhous Nixon. Vietnam, Watergate...there's some good stuff too.
The Doctor: Not enough.
Song: Hippie!

— Doctor Who, "The Impossible Astronaut"

There is an old Vulcan proverb: "Only Nixon could go to China."

— Spock, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

NO! I thought I made it clear the first time this came up: I don't want him in Hell. It's not fair to my other guests.

— The Devil, God, the Devil and Bob

Devil Flanders: I give you the Jury of the Damned! Lizzie Borden, Benedict Arnold, Blackbeard the pirate, John Dillinger, John Wilkes Booth, The Starting Line of the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers, and Richard Nixon!
Nixon: But, I'm not dead yet! Uh, in fact I just wrote an article for Redbook!
Devil Flanders: Hey, listen, I did a favor for you!
Nixon: Yes, Master.

— The Simpsons

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