# Quotations From Or About Richard Milhous Nixon **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 17, 2008, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948 "2008-01-17T23:26:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/1 "2008-01-17T23:26:41Z")
Let us begin with my pointing out that Dick Nixon is not my favorite President. However, he had a tendency to say the most _interesting_ things, on & off the record. And, in their turn, _others_ said _interesting_ things about _him_. So, here’s your chance to post your favorite quotes **by** or **about** the late President. I’ll start the Thread off with one of each. Enjoy, & add your own. > [@](#): > > ‘‘I have 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, reminiscing about his life, on an audio tape at the Nixon Library. > [@](#): > > 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. > Hunter S Thompson. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/2 "2008-01-17T23:28:40Z")
BTW–Mods? If this gets too intense, please move it to the BBQ Pit. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/3 "2008-01-18T01:58:15Z")
> [@](#): > > You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. _After being defeated for governor of California_ ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/4 "2008-01-18T02:04:13Z")
> [@](#): > > It isn’t very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we’ve got is honestly ours. I should say this—that Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she’d look good in anything. from Nixon’s Checkers speech ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/5 "2008-01-18T02:05:21Z")
Ooh, forgot the best: > [@](#): > > I am not a crook. –Richard Nixon, lying scum ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/6 "2008-01-18T02:14:34Z")
[QUOTE=] When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal. [/QUOTE] -Richard Nixon ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/7 "2008-01-18T04:42:22Z")
I have never had much sympathy for the point of view, “it isn’t whether you win or lose that counts, but how you play the game.” Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists. You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates. 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 would have made a good Pope. People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true. Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren’t for the goddamned people. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/8 "2008-01-18T05:14:54Z")
“He would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him…” -Henry Kissinger ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Dave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/46a35a/32.png) [@Great\_Dave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Dave)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/9 "2008-01-18T06:20:27Z")
I forget who said it, but it went something like- “Dick Nixon is the kind of guy, who, if he saw you drowning 50 feet offshore, would throw a rope 35 feet, and then have Kissinger say he met you more than halfway.” ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/10 "2008-01-18T06:28:55Z")
“I’ve been called worse things by better people.” - Pierre Elliot Trudeau, on hearing that Nixon called him “that asshole”. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/11 "2008-01-18T08:03:55Z")
I’m disappointed in you geeks. **Morbo** : Morbo will now introduce the candidates - Puny Human Number One, Puny Human Number Two, and Morbo’s good friend Richard Nixon. **Richard Nixon’s Head** : How’s the family, Morbo? **Morbo** : Belligerent and numerous. ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/12 "2008-01-18T08:42:53Z")
This would be tough to track down, but I believe this was from “the Oval Office tapes” which Richard Nixon eventually was forced to release. In **August, 1973** , someone (John Dean, Haldeman, Ehlichman, etc) was in the Oval Office talking to Nixon concerning the increasingly growing scandal the Watergate break-in was causing. Nixon replied “Things will be different a year from now.” One year later in **August, 1974** Nixon resigned. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/13 "2008-01-18T08:52:53Z")
“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.” - Richard Nixon ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/14 "2008-01-18T10:38:28Z")
But I was wrong. Whatever else might be said about Nixon – and there is still serious doubt in my mind that he could pass for Human – he is a goddam stone fanatic on every facet of pro football. At one point in our conversation, when I was feeling a bit pressed for leverage, I mentioned a down & out pass – in the waning moments of the 1967 Super Bowl mismatch between Green Bay and Oakland – to an obscure, second-string Oakland receiver named Bill Miller that had struck in my mind because of its pinpoint style & precision. He hesitated for a moment, lost in thought, then he whacked me on the thigh and laughed: ‘That’s right, by God! The Miami boy!’ I was stunned. He not only remembered the play, but he knew where Miller had played in college. Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing on the Campaign Trail, '74. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/15 "2008-01-18T16:17:52Z")
Hunter Thompson (he’s showing up a lot in this thread), in his eulogy for Nixon: Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together. Nixon laughed when I told him this. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you.” And since Nixon’s head has made an appearance: “I’ll sell our children’s organs to zoos for meat, and go into people’s homes at night and wreck up the place!” ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/16 "2008-01-18T16:33:52Z")
The New York Times, which has a history of not using profanity, actually published the phrase “President Nixon’s shitlist.” When readers complained, they retorted: The Times will accept “shit” from the President of the United States. We will not accept it from anyone else. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/17 "2008-01-18T17:22:58Z")
I read this in one of Nixon’s post-resignation books, which I consider to be excellent advice for any politician: “Never say what you will never do.” Meaning, do not tell your opponents what options you’ve ruled out. Let them have to defend against all of them. Nancy Pelosi violated this rule to the country’s detriment when she ruled out impeachment of the current president, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/18 "2008-01-18T18:01:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Nixon’s spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives whether you are me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Aimee Fisher or Boris Yeltsin’s daughter or her finance’s sixteen-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee with his whole like a thunder cloud right in front of him. > > This is not a generational thing. You don’t even have to know who Richard Nixon was > to be a victim of his ugly Nazi experiments. > > He has poisoned our water forever. > > Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest, but he also shit in our nest and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory as a brand. By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream. HST, as recorded in Paul Oakenfold’s “Nixon’s Spirit.” ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/19 "2008-01-18T18:23:36Z")
“Avoid needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.” Abbie Hoffman, or perhaps Jerry Rubin ---
**Author:** ![ChiefScott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58f4c7/32.png) [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948/20 "2008-01-18T18:37:06Z")
From polar opposites of the Nixon quote spectrum – “A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life’s mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which otherwise would have remained dormant.” and “Sock it to me.” – on _Laugh In_ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quotations-from-or-about-richard-milhous-nixon/433948.md?page=2)