Politics and Power

I hope that . . . television, radio, and the press first recognize the great responsibility they have to report all the news and, second, recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they are against a candidate—give him the shaft. But also recognize, if they give him the shaft—put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says, now and then.

[ Of John Dean :] A loose cannon.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President I must put the interests of America first. . . . Therefore, I shall resign the presidency, effective at noon tomorrow.

In the past few days . . . it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort [to remain in office as president despite the Watergate scandal]. . . . But with the disappearance of that base, I now believe that the constitutional purpose has been served, and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged.

[ Requesting aides to resist exposure of Watergate scandal :] I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up or anything else, if it’ll save it—save the plan.

[ On the Watergate scandal :] There can be no whitewash at the White House.

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.

If when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation . . . acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

After a third of a century of power flowing from the people and the States to Washington it is time for a New Federalism in which power, funds, and responsibility will flow from Washington to the States and to the people.

North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

Pat [his wife] doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.

Liberal institutions straightway cease to be liberal, as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions.

Rome-Berlin axis.

[ Of Bill Clinton :] This is our first black President.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty. . . . Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive.

Here [in Paris] they hang a man first, and try him afterwards.

Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories.

Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government.

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.

Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even half-wits would argue it to pieces.

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.