Richard Nixon

“ With the help of people we can do anything, and without their help, we can do nothing. In this spirit, together, we can reclaim our land for ours and generations to come.
Between now and the year 2000, over 100 million children will be born in the United States. Where they grown up -- and how -- will, more than any one thing, measure the quality of American life in these years ahead. ”

“ I would be the last to suggest that the road to peace is not difficult and dangerous, but I believe our new policies have contributed to the prospect that America may have the best chance since World War II to enjoy a generation of uninterrupted peace. And that chance will be enormously increased if we continue to have a relationship between Congress and the Executive in which, despite differences in detail, where the security of America and the peace of mankind are concerned, we act not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans. ”

“ The primary responsibility for crimes that affect individuals is with local and State rather than with Federal Government. But in the field of organized crime, narcotics, pornography, the Federal Government has a special responsibility it should fulfill. And we should make Washington, D.C., where we have the primary responsibility, an example to the Nation and the world of respect for law rather than lawlessness.
I now turn to a subject which, next to our desire for peace, may well become the major concern of the American people in the decade of the seventies. ”

“ We need a fresh climate in America, one in which a person can breathe freely and breathe in freedom.
Our recognition of the truth that wealth and happiness are not the same thing requires us to measure success or failure by new criteria.
Even more than the programs I have described today, what this Nation needs is an example from its elected leaders in providing the spiritual and moral leadership which no programs for material progress can satisfy. ”

“ Above all, let us inspire young Americans with a sense of excitement, a sense of destiny, a sense of involvement, in meeting the challenges we face in this great period of our history. Only then are they going to have any sense of satisfaction in their lives.
The greatest privilege an individual can have is to server in a cause bigger than himself. ”

“ Or does it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this place will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people lived in metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog, poisoned by water, deafened by noise, and terrorized by crime?
These are not the great questions that concern world leaders at summit conferences. But people do not live at the summit. They life in the foothills of everyday experience, and it is time for all of us to concern ourselves with the way real people live in real life. ”

“ The decade of the sixties was also a period of great growth economically. But in that same 10-year period we witnessed the greatest growth of crime, the greatest increase of inflation, the greatest social unrest in America in 100 years. Never has a nation seemed to have had more and enjoyed it less. ”

“ For the past 30 years our population has also been growing and shifting. The result is exemplified in the vast areas of rural America emptying out of people and promise -- a third of our counties lost population in the sixties.
The violent and decayed central cities of our great metropolitan complexes are the most conspicuous area of failure in American life today.
I propose that before these problems become insoluble, the Nation develop a national growth policy. ”

“ Today the great industrial nations of Europe, as well as Japan, have regained their economic strength; and the nations of Latin America -- and many of the nations who acquired their freedom from colonialism after World War II in Asia and Africa -- have a new sense of pride and dignity and a determination to assume the responsibility for their own defense. ”

“ The seventies will be a time of new beginnings, a time of exploring both on the earth and in the heavens, a time of discovery. But the time has also come for emphasis on developing better ways of managing what we have and completing what man's genius has begun but left unfinished. ”

“ As we move into the decade of the seventies, we have the greatest opportunity for progress at home of any people in world history.
Our gross nation product will increase by $500 billion in the next 10 years. This increase alone is greater than the entire growth of the American economy from 1790 to 1950. ”

“ Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later. ”

“ Then, because of America's overwhelming military and economic strength, because of the weakness of other major free world powers and the inability of scores of newly independent nations to defend, or even govern, themselves, America had to assume the major burden for the defense of the world. ”

“ They remind us also of that special genius of American democracy, which at one critical turning point after another has led us to spot the new road to the future and given us the wisdom and the courage to take it. ”

“ It has been said that no matter how many national parks and historical monuments we buy and develop, the truly significant environment for each of us is that in which we spend 80 percent of our time -- in our homes, in our places of work, the streets over which we travel. ”

“ When a system penalizes work, breaks up homes, robs recipients of dignity, there is no alternative to abolishing that system and adopting in its place the program of income support, job training, and work incentives which I recommended to the Congress last year. ”

“ We shall be faithful to our treaty commitments, but we shall reduce our involvement and our presence in other nations' affairs.
To insist that other nations play a role is not a retreat from responsibility; it is a sharing of responsibility. ”

“ We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor's yard. ”

“ We have been too tolerant of our surroundings and too willing to leave it to others to clean up our environment. It is time for those who make massive demands on society to make some minimal demands on themselves. ”

“ The automobile is our worst polluter of the air. Adequate control requires further advances in engine design and fuel composition. We shall intensify our research, set increasingly strict standards, and strengthen enforcement procedures -- and we shall do it now. ”

“ Each of us must resolve that each day he will leave his home, his property, the public places of the city or town a little cleaner, a little better, a little more pleasant for himself and those around him. ”