Richard Milhouse Nixon
                            The Resignation Speech
                           Thursday, August 8, 1974

Good evening.

This is the thirty-seventh time I have spoken to you from this office, where 
so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this Nation.  Each 
time I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected 
the national interest. 

In all of the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to 
do what was best for the Nation.  Throughout the long and difficult period of 
Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible 
effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. 

In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer 
have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that 
effort.  As long as there was a base, I felt strongly that ir was necessary to 
see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to de otherwise 
would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process, and 
a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future. 

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. 

I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal 
agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so.  
But the interests of the Nation must always come before any personal 
considerations. 

From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leasers, I have 
concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of 
the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult 
decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of 
the Nation would require. 

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 
interest of America first.  America needs a full-time President and a full-
time Congress, particularly at this time with the problems we face at home and 
abroad. 

To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication 
would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and 
Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of 
peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. 

Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.  Vice 
President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office. 

As I recall the high hopes for America with which we began this second term, I 
feel a great sadness that I will not be here in this office working on your 
behalf to achieve those hopes in the next two and one-half years.  But in 
turning over direction of the Government to Vice President Ford, I know, as I 
told the Nation when I nominated him for that office ten months ago, that the 
leadership of America will be in good hands. 

In passing this office to the Vice President, I also do so with the profound 
sense of the weight of responsibility that will fall on his shoulders tomorrow 
and, therefore, of the understanding, the patience, the cooperation he will 
need from all Americans. 

As he assumes that responsibility, he will deserve the help and support of all 
of us.  As we look to the future, the first essential is to begin healing the 
wounds of this Nation; to put the bitterness and divisions of the recent past 
behind us and to rediscover those shared ideals that lie at the heart of our 
strength and unity as a great and as a free people. 

By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of that 
process of healing which is so desperately needed in America. 

I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the 
events that led to this decision.  I would say only that if some of my 
judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed 
at the time to be the best interest of the Nation. 

To those who have stood with me during these past difficult months, to my 
family, my friends, to many others who joined in supporting my cause because 
they believed it was right, I will be eternally grateful for your support. 

And to those who have not felt able to give me your support, let me say I 
leave with no bitterness toward those who have opposed me, because all of us, 
in the final analysis, have been concerned with the good of the country 
however our judgments might differ. 

So, let us all now join together in affirming that common commitment and in 
helping our new President succeed for the benefit of all Americans. 

I shall leave this office with regret at not completing my term, but with 
gratitude for the privilege of serving as your President for the past five and 
one-half years.  These years have been a momentous time in the history of our 
Nation and the world.  They have been a time of achievement in which we can 
all be proud, achievements that represent the shared efforts of the 
Administration, the Congress and the people. 

But the challenges ahead are equally great and they, too, will require the 
support and the efforts of the Congress and the people working in cooperation 
with the new Administration. 

We have ended America's longest war, but in the work of securing a lasting 
peace in the world, the goals ahead are even more far-reaching and more 
difficult.  We must complete a structure of peace so that it will be said of 
this generation, our generation, of Americans, by the people of all nations, 
not only that we ended one war, but that we prevented future wars. 

We have unlocked the doors that for a quarter of a century stood between the 
United States and the People's Republic of China. 

We must now ensure that the one quarter of the world's people who live in the 
People's Republic of China will be and remain not our enemies but our friends. 

In the Middle East, 100 million people in the Arab countries, many of whom 
have considered us their enemy for nearly twenty years, now look on us as 
their friends.  We must continue to build on that friendship so that peace can 
settle at last over the Middle East and so that the cradle of civilization 
will not become its grave. 

Together with the Soviet Union we have made the crucial breakthroughs that 
have begun the process of limiting nuclear arms.  But we must set as our goal 
not just limiting, but reducing and finally destroying these terrible weapons 
so that they cannot destroy civilization and so that the threat of nuclear war 
will no longer hang over the world and the people. 

We have opened the new relation with the Soviet Union.  We must continue to 
develop and expand that new relationship so that the two strongest nations of 
the world will live together in cooperation rather than confrontation. 

Around the world, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, 
there are millions of people who live in terrible poverty, even starvation.  
We must keep as our goal turning away from production for war and expanding 
production for peace so that people everywhere on this earth can at least look 
forward in their children's time, if not in our own time, to having the 
necessities for a decent life. 

Here in America, we are fortunate that most of our people have not only the 
blessings of liberty, but also the means to live full and good and, by the 
world's standards, even abundant lives.  We must press on, however, to a goal 
of not only more and better jobs, but of full opportunity for every American, 
and of what we are striving right now to achieve, prosperity without 
inflation. 

For more than a quarter of a century in public life I have shared in the 
turbulent history of this era.  I have fought for what I believed in.  I have 
tried to the best of my ability to discharge those duties and meet those 
responsibilities that were entrusted to me. 

Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have 
taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, 
"whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who 
errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error 
and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows the 
great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, 
who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at 
the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly." 

I pledge to you tonight that as long as I have a breath of life in my body, I 
shall continue in that spirit.  I shall continue to work for the great causes 
to which I have been dedicated throughout my years as a Congressman, a 
Senator, a Vice President and President; the cause of peace not just for 
America but among all nations, prosperity, justice and opportunity for all of 
our people. 

There is one cause above all to which I have been devoted and to which I shall 
always be devoted for as long as I live. 

When I first took the oath of office as President five and one-half years ago, 
I made this sacred commitment: "To consecrate my office, my energies and all 
the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations." 

I have done my very best in all the days since to be true to that pledge.  As 
a result of these efforts, I am confident that the world is a safer place 
today, not only for the people of America, but for the people of all nations, 
and that all of our children have a better chance than before of living in 
peace rather than dying in war. 

This, more than anything, is what I hoped to achieve when I sought the 
Presidency.  This, more than anything, is what I hope will be my legacy to 
you, to our country, as I leave the Presidency. 

To have served in this office is to have felt a very personal sense of kinship 
with each and every American.  In leaving it, I do so with this prayer: May 
God's grace be with you in all the days ahead. 



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