QuoteProject
After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon's tapes.
Bob Woodward
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects on Nixon's struggle to reshape his legacy after the Watergate scandal, emphasizing the power of historical truth.

Bob Woodward's quote highlights the futile effort of Richard Nixon to erase the negative impacts of the Watergate scandal from his history. Despite Nixon's aggressive attempts to manipulate his narrative, the truth ultimately prevails, underscored by the existence of recorded evidence in the form of his tapes which preserve the reality of the events.

Themes

HistoryLegacyTruthWatergateNixonMemory

In practice

Example use cases

A speaker at a political rally might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of accountability in leadership.

More from Bob Woodward

I don't think there will ever be a permanent truce, but I believe the media needs to be more careful and be willing to count to 10 before rushing on the air or into print.
Bob WoodwardRead
There's hostility to lying, and there should be.
Bob WoodwardRead
Newspapers that are truly independent, like The Washington Post, can still aggressively investigate anyone or anything with no holds barred.
Bob WoodwardRead
The legislator learns that when you talk a lot, you get in trouble. You have to listen a lot to make deals.
Bob WoodwardRead
The central dilemma in journalism is that you don't know what you don't know.
Bob WoodwardRead
I'm not going to name some of my colleagues who are very well-known for their television presentation, but they wouldn't know new information or how to report a story if it came up and bit them.
Bob WoodwardRead

Similar quotes

One has to confront history honestly.
Wole SoyinkaRead
There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.
Martin ScorseseRead
My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal. Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.
Norman FinkelsteinRead
The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.
Michel-Rolph TrouillotRead
When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing.
Gerda LernerRead
The Great War was nobody's fault - or everybody's.
Margaret MacmillanRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.