Only US president ever to resign left one line everyone still quotes
One day after Richard Nixon resigned as US president on 8 August 1974, his farewell speech included advice on hatred that mirrored his own political collapse.
Richard Nixon remains the only president in US history to resign from office, stepping down on 8 August 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. The next day, addressing his staff at the White House for the last time, he delivered a farewell speech that historians still cite decades later — not for its politics, but for a single piece of personal advice. “Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself,” he said.
Nixon’s path to the presidency had already involved two painful defeats: the 1960 election loss to John F Kennedy, and a failed 1962 bid for California governor after which he told reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” He returned to national politics by appealing to the ‘silent majority’ and won the presidency in 1968, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1974.
During his time in office, Nixon reshaped US foreign policy through his 1972 visit to Beijing, which restored diplomatic ties with China after more than 20 years of isolation, and through détente with the Soviet Union backed by arms-control agreements. Domestically, his administration established the Environmental Protection Agency and backed legislation on environmental protection, workplace safety and healthcare funding.
The Watergate scandal, however, overshadowed those achievements. It began in 1972 with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters carried out by people connected to his administration, at a time when Nixon was already cruising toward re-election. The subsequent cover-up, later revealed through secret White House recordings that showed an effort to obstruct justice, cost him the public trust that had carried him back into office.
Facing near-certain impeachment as Republican support in Congress evaporated, Nixon chose resignation over conviction. The farewell quote he left behind — that hatred only wins once the person it’s aimed at starts hating back — has since been read as a description of exactly what happened to his own presidency.
Image: Wikimedia Commons (National Archives and Records Administration, public domain)
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