Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Failure
The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you’ve been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Challenges
The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I’d call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America’s whole culture – aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn’t part of the local atmosphere.
—Richard 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 Nixon
People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Fear
Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Conflict
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Identity, Winners, Winning
If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Equality, Prejudice, Togetherness
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 Nixon
Topics: Battle
Solutions are not the answer.
—Richard 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 Nixon
Topics: Difficulties, Difficulty
Once you get into this great stream of history you can’t get out. You can drown. Or you can be pulled ashore by the tide. But it is awfully hard to get out when you are in the middle of the stream—if it is intended that you stay there.
—Richard Nixon
I played by the rules of politics as I found them.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Politics, Politicians
I often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Music
A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Perseverance
Why would anyone want to be President today? The answer is not one of glory, or fame; today the burdens of the office outweigh its privileges. Its not because the Presidency offers a chance to be somebody, but because it offers a chance to do something.
—Richard Nixon
Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today’s youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow’s leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Reading
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 Nixon
The public lands represent in a sense, the breathing space of the nation.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Wilderness
By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the healing.
—Richard Nixon
Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
—Richard Nixon
Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Bureaucracy, Change
I can see clearly now … that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate…
—Richard 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 Nixon
Topics: Government
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 Nixon
Topics: Public
We are not bent on conquest or on threatening others. But we do have a nuclear umbrella that can protect others, above all the states to which we are allied or in which we have a great national interest.
—Richard Nixon
The true idealist pursues what his heart says
is right in a way that his head says will work.
—Richard Nixon
Topics: Conviction
The peace we seek to win is not victory over any other people, but the peace that comes with healing in its wings; with compassion for those who have suffered; with understanding for those who have opposed us; with the opportunity for all the people of this earth to choose their own destiny”.
—Richard Nixon
There are these and other great causes that we were elected overwhelmingly to carry forward in November of 1972. And what we were elected to do, we are going to do, and let others wallow in Watergate, we are going to do our job.
—Richard 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 Nixon
Topics: Defeat, Failure
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Lyndon B. Johnson American Head of State
- Herbert Hoover American Statesman
- Hubert Humphrey American Head of State
- John F. Kennedy American Head of State
- Ronald Reagan American Head of State
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State
- George H. W. Bush American Head of State
- Calvin Coolidge American Head of State
- Jimmy Carter American Head of State
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