Even the most cynical can hardly be surprised by the antics of Nixon and his accomplices as they are gradually revealed. It matters little, at this point, where the exact truth lies in the maze of perjury, evasion, and of contempt for the normal – hardly inspiring – standards of political conduct.

I kept a very full diary of my relationship with Nixon, for some strange reason, until he became president.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

Nixon was a bad loser. He hated losing worse than death, and that is why I enjoyed him. We were both football fans, both addicts; and on some days, nothing else mattered.

You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan – and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.

Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.