Murray Kempton Quotes

Nixonphobia

Nixon probably was a nice guy.

While he was president, it was popular to be a Nixon hater.

I was never for Richard Nixon until Watergate.

I can't stand that Richard Nixon fellow.

Compared to Nixon.

[Describing Richard M. Nixon] ... a kamikaze pilot who keeps apologizing for the attack.

Had matters gone as planned—and the [Watergate] tapes trickled out posthumously—[Richard] Nixon would have managed the extraordinary feat of committing suicide after his own death.

You roll back the stones and you find the slithering things of the world of Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon as a 12-year-old was given a portrait of Lincoln that he hung over his bed. Nixon also justified what would later be seen as abuses of power by comparing America in the Vietnam era to the country during the Civil War.

Nixon had been to China. He had been to Russia doing arms negotiation. And so, he was on his way toward what happened in November, which was an electoral win with 49 states. And the sheer unnecessariness of the Watergate break-in is something that must have tormented him and his allies in all of the years that followed.

So far as I'm concerned, Ronald Reagan was the best president. Nixon was the worst. Some of his policies were okay, but he disgraced the office.

Voters who disregarded Richard Nixon's involvement in the questionable ethics issue that led to his Checkers speech should not have been surprised when he orchestrated the Watergate cover-up as president.

Experience helped Richard Nixon, but it didn't save him, and it certainly wasn't a blanket endorsement. He blundered terribly in dealing with Vietnam.

I’ve studied Nixon since the Kennedy campaign. I’ve no doubt that the trail will lead to the Oval Office.

Richard Nixon impeached himself. He gave us Gerald Ford as his revenge.

Nixon is a double-barrelled, treble-shotted twister, as my old history master would have remarked; and the fact has been a matter of universal knowledge since at least 1952, when, if I remember aright the joke, “Would you buy a second-hand car from this man?” began to circulate.

I don't believe Richard Nixon ... ever shall be totally exonerated. While it's true he's been pardoned for any Federal crimes he may have committed as President, he can't escape the judgement of history.

We can be lied to only so many times. The best thing that he [President Nixon] can do for the country is to get the hell out of the White House and get out this afternoon.

I’m not criticizing Richard Nixon except to say that he’s a conservative.

If I’ve done nothing else for the country, I’ve saved them from Dick Nixon.

The searing melodrama of the Watergate investigation exposed new Nixon lies every day.

Richard Nixon ran on a promise that he had a secret plan for peace (in Vietnam). He kept his promise and kept it a secret.

The White House tapes, the recordings that Nixon made of his conversations in office, have long been recognized as a marvel of verbal incontinence.

The White House tapes, recording Nixon's nefarious doings from Watergate to the bombing of Vietnam, made frightening reading once made public on the orders of Congress.