I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

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.

You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

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.

I have impeached myself by resigning.

If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community - and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

It's a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it.

A president can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I'm not like that I never shoot blanks.

I am not a crook.

Tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support.

I let the American people down.

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.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

I believe in the battle-whether it's the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don't have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

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.

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we're both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you've blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.

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.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion - a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long - that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

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.

I've never canceled a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons or editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn't have any newspapers or magazines to read.

Castro couldn't even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

We are not spending the Federal Government's money, we are spending the taxpayer's money, and it must be spent n a way which guarantees his money's worth and yields the fullest possible benefit to the people being helped.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don't want to be a colony in a nation.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.