Quotes About Ronald Reagan

#1. The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).

Mark Leibovich

#2. To Ronald Reagan, The Man Who Won the War.

Tom Clancy

#3. Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee, because we are not going to allow - people will wake up and we're not going to allow a con artist to take over the party of [Abraham] Lincoln and [Ronald] Reagan.

Marco Rubio

#4. This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

Neal Stephenson

#5. It is worth emphasizing that Iran released our hostages in 1981 the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

Ted Cruz

#6. There's no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was by far the greatest. Because he had real principles and he stuck by them. He made clear what he was going to do, and he did it. He didn't back down.

Milton Friedman

#7. Every parent is wondering, how do we keep our kids safe? We need a commander in chief who does what Ronald Reagan did with communism, which is he set out a global strategy to defeat Soviet communism.

Ted Cruz

#8. I have criticisms of Ronald Reagan, but he lives in another universe from the kind of political theater that is represented by people, like Sarah Palin, who aren't really public servants.

Eugene Jarecki

#9. It's time for a 21st-century retirement age. If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn't 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever so gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers.

Michelle Malkin

#10. Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.

George Will

#11. Ronald Reagan said, 'Trust, but verify.' President Obama is 'trust, but vilify.' He trusts our enemies and vilifies everyone who disagrees with him.

Mike Huckabee

#12. President [Ronald] Reagan told me he would negotiate and negotiate and negotiate with the Soviets, and I believed him.

Helmut Schmidt

#13. I think Ronald Reagan is what happened ... The age of Reagan brought conservatism into the mainstream ... It also brought us the beginning of the new media-talk radio, the internet, cable television.

Douglas Brinkley

#14. I was so proud to have the Reagan name and to be Ronald Reagan's son. What a great honor.

Michael Reagan

#15. President George Herbert Walker Bush ran as a strong conservative, ran to continue the third term of Ronald Reagan, continue the Ronald Reagan revolution. Then he raised taxes and in '92 ran as an establishment moderate - same candidate, two very different campaigns.

Ted Cruz

#16. I think the best president - because he changed the whole mood of the country, the whole economy of the country, and stood up to Communism ... that was continuing its causes around the world, and backed them off and caused them to collapse - and that was Ronald Reagan.

Pat Boone

#17. The youthful sparkle in Ronald Reagan's eyes is caused by his contact lenses, which he keeps highly polished.

Sheilah Graham Westbrook

#18. The central con of the political coalition assembled by Ronald Reagan and maintained by his successors was that government was a common enemy.

Timothy Noah

#19. [I]f you look at United States history since World War II, you find that of the 10 presidents who preceded Barack Obama, seven left office with a debt ratio lower than when they came in. Who were the three exceptions? Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes.

Paul Krugman

#20. So far as I'm concerned, Ronald Reagan was the best president. Nixon was the worst. Some of his policies were okay, but he disgraced the office.

Charles Krauthammer

#21. I began my journalistic career on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in. That's the day I showed up for work at 'The New Republic' magazine.

Charles Krauthammer

#22. I like Ronald Reagan, who didn't play crass politics, and he just articulated and delivered on broad themes that were needed. Free markets meant free markets. Deregulation. Lower tax rates. Strong national defense. And he was credible and believable.

Dave Brat

#23. There have been many amazing Presidents in American history, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, all of whom I greatly admire.

Donald Trump

#24. Ronald Reagan wasn't qualified to be governor, let alone president.

James Garner

#25. Ronald Reagan's era can be defined, number one in most people's minds, by the Cold War and by the end of it - and by the strong principles he stood for.

Marco Rubio

#26. And so it was interesting for me to find myself very enamored of a Republican president, but Ronald Reagan was someone I thought captured the spirit of America.

Ed Gillespie

#27. I registered as a Republican when I turned 18 because of Ronald Reagan - he was the president at the time; I admired what he stood for. I respected him.

Brian Sandoval

#28. I feel bound to respect Ronald Reagan, as every American should - not least because he chose a career of public service when he could have made a lot more money doing something else, and not least because he took genuine risks for peace.

Rick Perlstein

#29. Ronald Reagan was a president of strength. His philosophy was a philosophy of strength - a strong military, a strong economy and strong families.

Mitt Romney

#30. I think Ronald Reagan was one of the great presidents, period, not just recently. I thought he had the demeanor. I thought he had the bearing. I thought he had the thought process.

Donald Trump

#31. What is with this campy fixation on all things Ronald Reagan? They talk about him the way gay people talk about Barbra Streisand. I think they just want him on a stamp so they can lick his ass. I think they only named an airport after him so they can say, I'm coming into Reagan!

Bill Maher

#32. Do Americans want the government to micromanage every aspect of our lives? President Ronald Reagan certainly didn't.

Kimberly Guilfoyle

#33. One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented.

Robert K. Massie

#34. As Ronald Reagan understood, the difference between a good tax structure and a poor one has a very real impact not only on how much money we have in our pockets every April 15th, but whether we have a job to support our families in the first place.

Mike Bouchard

#35. Ronald Reagan's well documented final battles with Alzheimer's disease were fought with the same conviction and courage that his many public battles were fought.

William L. Jenkins

#36. And if Henry Higgins is not the most reprehensible character ever written for the stage, that's only because somewhere, somehow, someone is composing a musical biography of Ronald Reagan

Steve Kluger

#37. The words spoken by the leader of the free world can expand the frontiers of freedom or shrink them. When Ronald Reagan called on Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall', a surge of confidence rose that would ultimately breach the bounds of the evil empire.

Mitt Romney

#38. I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport.

George W. Bush

#39. President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet constitution, and he noted that it purported to grant wonderful rights of all sorts to people. But those rights were empty promises, because that system did not have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law and enforce those rights.

John Roberts

#40. President Ronald Reagan on his 1980 opponent: "I had a dream the other night. I dreamed that Jimmy Carter came to me and asked why I wanted his job. I told him I didn't want his job. I want to be President."

Bob Dole

#41. Ronald Reagan?wasn't without leadership ability, but he lacked most of the management skills that a President needs. But let me give him his due: he would have made a hell of a king.

Tip O'Neill

#42. Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.

Rush Limbaugh

#43. It was widespread that the politics of Tea Party people would be foreign to Ronald Reagan and they would be seen by him as frivolous and uninformed.

Eugene Jarecki

#44. Ronald Reagan was not a god. He himself would have said that. Don't follow people. Follow principle.

Ben Shapiro

#45. Their imperfect record at awards shows was disappointing, sure, but the best prize of all came when, on February 4, 1986, President Ronald Reagan name-checked and quoted directly from the movie - where we're going, we don't need roads - in his State of the Union address.

Caseen Gaines

#46. Everyone seemed to want a piece of Ronald Reagan. It was maddening.

Michael Reagan

#47. As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.

Helen Thomas

#48. Ronald Reagan is the world's largest Muppet.

Robin Williams

#49. Television has changed how we choose our leaders. It elected Ronald Reagan and a host of Kennedy-look-alike congressmen with blow-dried hair and gleaming teeth. It destroyed Senator Joe McCarthy by showing him in action and it created Jerry Falwell.

Ronald Steel

#50. Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.

Lindsey Graham

#51. I'm a conservative. I was an avid supporter of Ronald Reagan; I thought he was fabulous.

Shannen Doherty

#52. As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.

George H. W. Bush

#53. The first reports of AIDS closely followed the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, whose 'family values' agenda and alliance with Christian conservatives associated AIDS with deviance and sin.

Barton Gellman

#54. This is beautiful." "If you're Ronald Reagan, I guess." "The idea of it, I mean. The beauty hidden within the rot." "Sure. That's what I meant, too." I

Richard Kadrey

#55. In the '80s, Ronald Reagan inspired me to become politicized, because I grew up in that era when everything I cared about was under attack.

Michael Franti

#56. [On Ronald Reagan:] Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears.

Margaret Thatcher

#57. Anti-Tax fetishist Grover Norquist owns a bust of Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes 11 times.

John Fugelsang

#58. Then came the hostage crisis during which Carter did nothing to rattle the ayatollahs who hung tough until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, when they suddenly backed down.

Alexander Haig

#59. Ronald Reagan knew his own mind. He had firm principles - and, I believe, right ones. He expounded them clearly, he acted upon them decisively.

Margaret Thatcher

#60. Ronald Reagan had many fine qualities and he had many shortcomings. He's not the simple, folksy figure that he's often portrayed as.

Eugene Jarecki

#61. The Republican Party is either going to return to the party of fiscal responsibility and consistent conservative principles as it was under Ronald Reagan, or it will continue down the path of 'sporadic moderation.'

Todd Tiahrt

#62. Nothing is going to change the fact that I believe Ronald Reagan is the greatest president in my lifetime - may well be the greatest president this nation ever had.

Oliver North

#63. Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms.

Noam Chomsky

#64. [Ronald] Reagan seems to be a man of some basic convictions and on the other hand willing to let others do the ground homework, the detailed work.

Helmut Schmidt

#65. The modern era of continuity planning began under President Ronald Reagan.

Barton Gellman

#66. I mean, people need to remember without the grassroots, Ronald Reagan probably doesn't become president of the United States of America and he worked the grassroots on a regular basis during his political career and especially between the years of 1976 and 1980 after the loss in Kansas City.

Michael Reagan

#67. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

Christopher Hitchens

#68. I think Americans expect optimism in their leadership. The most popular and effective leaders, whether it was Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or Jack Kennedy, brought to it a sense of optimism and possibility.

David Brooks

#69. He's a beautiful man, but I'm sorry he doesn't agree with my political philosophy

Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan

Chris Matthews

#70. I've really had two heroes in my life. My father and Ronald Reagan.

Ted Cruz

#71. I often quote Ronald Reagan, who is pretty close to my favorite President ever, I will have to say that, but one of my favorite remarks he ever made was that when you look at Federal programs, there is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program.

Marsha Blackburn

#72. I think, like Ronald Reagan, in another way, in a secular way, John Paul II was a great communicator, but he was also a man of deep conviction.

Chris Matthews

#73. Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on 'Laugh In' in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it.

Christopher Buckley

#74. I tell people all the time that I was born and raised in Ronald Reagan's America.

Marco Rubio

#75. It is essential for politicians to make a connection with us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Teddy Roosevelt did, as John F. Kennedy did, as Ronald Reagan did.

Peter Jennings

#76. My job is being 'Mrs. Ronald Reagan.'

Nancy Reagan

#77. I think a Donald Trump presidency raises a new kind of version of conservatism which more closely resembles a kind of Father Coughlin, America first populism and nativism and isolationism, than the confident, modern, cosmopolitan, thoughtful, engaged conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan.

Bret Stephens

#78. [On Ronald Reagan:] The President doesn't want yes-men around. When he says no, we all say no.

Elizabeth Dole

#79. When Ronald Reagan chose George H.W. Bush in 1980, it was a clear signal that he was running an inclusive campaign; that he welcomed the moderate and even liberal wings of the GOP - there was a liberal wing back then - into his campaign.

Jeff Greenfield

#80. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a Star Wars defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.

Christopher Hitchens

#81. Success will require the studied lack of sophistication of a Ronald Reagan and the casual dishonesty of an FDR. The president must appear to be not very bright yet be able to lie convincingly.

George Friedman

#82. Richard Nixon was a very intelligent and able man. And he had the right ideas. But he did not have the adherence to principles that [Ronald] Reagan had. He did some very good things. We owe to Richard Nixon the volunteer army - he got rid of the draft. And that was a major increase in freedom.

Milton Friedman

#83. The Republicans won the women's vote in 2010. It was the first time since Ronald Reagan that the Republicans had won the women's vote. And when you look at the issues that really drove women to the Republican Party, it's been the issues related to the economy, to jobs, the debt.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

#84. He's cutting the heart out of the American dream to own a home and have a good job ... and still he's popular

Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan

Chris Matthews

#85. Presidents in both parties - from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan - have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity.

Marco Rubio

#86. Ronald Reagan wasn't in the establishment of the Republican Party either, nor was Richard Nixon.

Karl Rove

#87. If the United States had maintained its spending under Ronald Reagan, it is possible that the attacks of 9/11 - presaged by Islamic terror attacks on multiple American targets beginning with the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 - would have been stopped.

Ben Shapiro

#88. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.(Speaking about Ronald Reagan)

William Gibson

#89. The charismatic portrait of the modern leadership looks nothing like Fidel Castro. It is a faceless portrait that epitomizes the toughness of Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela's charisma, and the most compassionate heart of Mother Theresa.

Anthony Obi Ogbo

#90. Don't worry, America. We survived Jimmy Carter, and we will survive Barack Obama. Only one questions remains ... who is the next Ronald Reagan?

Kathleen Troia McFarland

#91. Ronald Reagan just signed the new tax law. But I think he was in Hollywood too long. He signed it, 'Best wishes, Ronald Reagan.'

Johnny Carson

#92. If we have George W. Bush as president, we're going to go back to the kind of policies we had when his father and Ronald Reagan were president.

Al Franken

#93. My godfather was a man named Justin Dart. Some of you may remember Justin Dart. My younger son's name is Justin, named after Justin Dart. I was executor of his estate, and he was my godfather. I first really got time to spend with Ronald Reagan with Justin Dart personally, one-on-one.

Arthur Laffer

#94. I think that Ronald Reagan had it right, being against abortion except in certain limited, defined circumstances.

John Bolton

#95. Ronald Reagan is a triumph of the embalmer's art.

Gore Vidal

#96. Conservatives deny that the private depends on public resources. Citing Ronald Reagan's credo that "The Government is the Problem," conservatives are constantly trying to eliminate public resources and to privatize as much as possible.

George Lakoff

#97. Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars.

Christopher Hitchens

#98. When Ronald Reagan was elected president for his first term in 1980, he received strong support from the so-called Sagebrush Rebels. The Rebels wanted lands owned by the federal government to be transferred to state governments.

Steve Hanke

#99. Ronald Reagan's idea of a good farm program was Hee Haw.

Jim Hightower

#100. News conferences are the only chance the American public has to see Ronald Reagan use his mind.

Sam Donaldson