A biography for Richard M. Nixonhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“If an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anything.”
“I played by the rules of politics as I found them.”
“A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.”
“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.”
“The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.”
“Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.”
“The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.”
“Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.”
“Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
“I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.”
“Tell them to send everything that can fly.”
“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.”
“There will be no whitewash in the White House.”
“Castro couldn't even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.”
“Solutions are not the answer.”