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Quotes of the day: Remembering Watergate
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Published Thursday, August 08, 2013 @ 6:28 AM EDT
Aug 08 2013

On August 8, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon announced he would resign the next day.

The night before, Nixon had met in the Oval Office with Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott, and Congressman John Jacob Rhodes. They told Nixon that he not only faced certain impeachment in the House of Representatives over the Watergate scandal, but that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him and remove him from office.

It was the first time a U.S. President resigned.

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I thought it was a helluva thriller. JFK`s murder marked the end of a dream, the end of a concept of idealism that I associate with my youth. Race war, Vietnam, Watergate. If JFK had lived, the combat situation in Vietnam would never have occurred.
-Oliver Stone

Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.
-Billy Graham

I suspect there have been a number of conspiracies that never were described or leaked out. But I suspect none of the magnitude and sweep of Watergate.
-Bob Woodward

I used to think that the Civil War was our country`s greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.
-Andrea Cohen

From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one- absolutely no one- is above the law.
-Leon Jaworski

Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses... The whole country did take part in quite a genuine sense in passing judgment on Richard Nixon.
-Archibald Cox

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.
-John le Carre

The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to bypass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election.
-Gerald R. Ford

This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.
-Dee Dee Myers

Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.
-Daniel Keys Moran

Watergate was unique because it allowed the public to play its democratic role in expressing its outrage at the presidency.
-Samuel Dash

Well, a lot of people don't want to be quoted. But keep in mind that Bob Woodward did all of his Watergate reporting with anonymous sources, and we know how that turned out.
-Edward Klein

The government paid the family of Richard Nixon $18 million for papers, tape recordings and other materials seized after Watergate.
-Dexter S. King

I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but rationalized illegal behavior. You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.
-Chuck Colson

When you're a lawyer, you expect your client to lie to you, but not when he is the President.
-Dick Houser

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.
-Golda Meir

The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.
-Arthur M. Schlesinger

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I`m innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job.
-Richard M. Nixon

There's a cancer on the presidency.
-John Dean

I can take it... The tougher it gets, the cooler I get...
-Richard M. Nixon

I gave 'em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.
-Richard M. Nixon

When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
-Richard M. Nixon

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out.
-Richard M. Nixon

Watergate does not bother me,
Does your conscience bother you?
-Lynyrd Skynyrd

The slow-rising central horror of Watergate is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.
-Hunter S. Thompson

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.
-Yogi Berra


Categories: Quotes on a topic, Watergate


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