1969-1974

Wife - Thelma "Patricia" Catherine Ryan (1912-1993)

Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew (1969-1973)

Vice-President Gerald R. Ford (1973-1974)

To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office ........

I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events
that led to this decision. I would say only that if some of my judgments were
wrong-and some were wrong-they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation.

Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."
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-Resignation Speech (August 8, 1974)