Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 1140 |
| AUTHOR: | Richard Milhous Nixon (1913–94) |
| QUOTATION: | Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | President William Safire claims that this televised speech had a great effect on public opinion and bought time for the Vietnamization program, effectively countering mounting dissent to the war. Safire discusses Nixon’s earlier uses of the “silent center.”—Safire’s Political Dictionary, p. 649–50 (1978). |
| SUBJECTS: | Majority |