I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it'll save it, sa… - Richard Nixon

When I first took the oath of office as President 5 1/2 years ago, I made this sacred commitment, to "consecrate my office, my energies, and all the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations."
I have done my very best in all the days since to be true to that pledge. As a result of these efforts, I am confident that the world is a safer place today, not only for the people of America but for the people of all nations, and that all of our children have a better chance than before of living in peace rather than dying in war.
This, more than anything, is what I hoped to achieve when I sought the Presidency. This, more than anything, is what I hope will be my legacy to you, to our country, as I leave the Presidency.
To have served in this office is to have felt a very personal sense of kinship with each and every American. In leaving it, I do so with this prayer: May God's grace be with you in all the days ahead.

Now, a bit of advice--that is what you have to learn to take when you come to these sessions--a bit of advice as to what, if I were your age, I would like to do in terms of preparing for whatever you may go into. Many of you will, I am sure, go into government. Most of you will end up, probably, in some kind of private activity as lawyers or doctors or businessmen or newspaper men and women, or whatever the case might be. But I would urge that whatever you do, as you go to college, don't specialize too much. This is an age--those years between 18 and 22 or 17 and 21, as the case might be, or if you go on to graduate school between 17 and 24 and 25--when you will have every opportunity to specialize in the law or in medicine or in some other profession. But this is the time when your minds are young, when they can, without any question, understand more, in which you can learn faster than at any time in your life. This is the time to get all of the broadest possible education that you can. I don't mean by that that the books you read in disciplines that are not the ones that are going to be your profession will be something that you will remember later on. But by having that experience now it means that you create a total environmental background that will serve you in good stead in the years ahead. The second point I would make is that one of the great things about being young is that young people are impatient. You want to go to the top very fast. I have found, for example, that the young lawyers I interviewed in our office in New York were asking, "When am I going to be a partner--tomorrow, the next day--in the firm?" Of course it takes a little time in a major law firm for that to happen. But impatience, of course, is a good factor as well. What I am suggesting to you, however, is this: Not everyone in this room is going to be the president of a corporation, is going to be a Congressman or a Senator, is going to be the top leader in the field that you choose, but everyone in this room is going to make a contribution in his particular field that is essential for the success of whoever may be that top leader.

I don't think women should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic and emotional.