Why Nixon’s advice on dealing with haters still gets quoted 50 years on

More than 50 years after it was spoken, a line from Richard Nixon’s final address to his White House staff is still quoted as advice on dealing with criticism and hostility. Delivered on 9 August 1974, one day after Nixon resigned as the 37th president of the United States, the line read: “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.”

The advice came from a man who had faced as much public hostility as any American president. Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F Kennedy and then the 1962 California governor’s race, telling reporters afterward, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” He rebuilt his career around the ‘silent majority’ and won the presidency in 1968, serving from 1969 to 1974.

His presidency delivered real achievements, including the 1972 opening of diplomatic relations with China after more than two decades of isolation and détente with the Soviet Union through arms-control agreements. At home, his administration created the Environmental Protection Agency and supported reforms in environmental protection, workplace safety and healthcare funding.

But Nixon also spent his presidency convinced that powerful enemies were working against him, a suspicion that fed directly into the Watergate scandal. It began with a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters organised by people in his administration, at a point when Nixon was already headed toward a landslide re-election. The cover-up that followed, later exposed through his own secret tape recordings, did more damage to his presidency than the original crime.

As Republican support in Congress collapsed and impeachment became all but certain, Nixon resigned on 8 August 1974 — the only US president to do so. The line he left behind about hatred destroying the person who holds onto it is remembered today as advice that applies well beyond politics, even if Nixon himself struggled to live by it.

Image: Wikimedia Commons (National Archives and Records Administration, public domain)