Checkers Speech Quotes

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

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.

Great care has gone into the construction of the shadow which declares itself to be Richard Nixon.

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

The most demeaning experience any country ever had to bear.

I can't stand that Richard Nixon fellow.

For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.

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 would look good in anything. One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don’t they will probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the nomination. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas - black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.

Nixon probably was a nice guy.

Compared to Nixon.

Nixonphobia

There were really funny characteristics about this guy [Richard Nixon], chief of which would be that he seemed to devote about 85 percent of his waking energy to suppressing any sign of his emotional response to anything that was going on around him, and the other 15 percent blurting out those authentic responses in the silliest and most inopportune ways. And he had these smiles that would come at the most inappropriate times - just flashes that there was an inner life screaming to get out.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.