Top 100 Reagan's Quotes
#1. There's no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying 'I am an American.'
Ronald Reagan
#2. Yes, the deficit doctors have their scalpels out all right, but they're not poised over the budget. That's as fat as ever and getting fatter. What they're ready to operate on is your wallet.
Ronald Reagan
#3. Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs - hadn't been done for a long time, and it's illegal in most countries - in the air controller strike.
Noam Chomsky
#4. It's difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn't available.
Ronald Reagan
#5. I keep Reagan's 11th Commandment that I don't run down other Republicans.
James Lankford
#6. It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.
Ronald Reagan
#7. If there's one thing the American people aren't lacking, it is courage.
Ronald Reagan
#8. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Ronald Reagan
#9. What do you say to your sister who poses in the nude? It's not like you are really itching to see photographs of your sister naked. I mean, it's just something that is not too exciting.
Ron Reagan
#10. Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world.
Ronald Reagan
#11. She bent over to pick up her glasses. "Do you need those?" Reagan asked. "Yes" - Cath put them on - "I need them to keep me from becoming the girl in She's All That.
Rainbow Rowell
#12. The sad reality is, it's not just the people I go to school with that are doing it. It's their parents too. Their noses are all turned up at me, like because of my diagnosis; I'm an alien to them. I'm not like their son or daughter so that means I'm not worthy of respect.
Melyssa Winchester
#13. Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx-first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother.
Ronald Reagan
#14. We do not deny any nation's legitimate interest in security. But protecting the security of one nation by robbing another of its national independence and national traditions is not legitimate. In the long run, it is not even secure.
Ronald Reagan
#15. God, the source of all knowledge, should never have been expelled from our children's classrooms.
Ronald Reagan
#16. One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all.
Ronald Reagan
#17. The best way to get over a dog's death is to get another soon.
Ronald Reagan
#18. The Constitution was never meant to prevent people from praying, it's declared purpose was to protect their freedom to pray
Ronald Reagan
#19. America's view of apartheid is simple and straightforward: We believe it is wrong. We condemn it. And we are united in hoping for the day when apartheid will be no more.
Ronald Reagan
#20. Ronald Reagan's biographer wrote of the former president's final days: "for all the intimate familiarity of that face and body, I did not feel his presence beside me-only his absence."
Edwin Morris
#21. Reagan grows up in 1920s Dixon, Illinois, and it's the heartland of America. It's a time when Americans are particularly drawn to this small town world because it's beginning to pass.
Robert Dallek
#22. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan
#23. I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.
Elena Kagan
#24. I'm against abortion. On the other hand, I believe in a woman's choice.
Nancy Reagan
#25. Our whole system of government is based on "We the people," but if we the people don't pay attention to what's going on, we have no right to bellyache or squawk when things go wrong.
Ronald Reagan
#26. I've talked to you on a number of occasions about the economic problems our nation faces, and I am prepared to tell you it's in a hell of a mess-we're not connected to the press room yet, are we?
Ronald Reagan
#27. I told you once that [our marriage] was like an adolescent's dream of what marriage should be like. That hasn't changed.
Ronald Reagan
#28. Inside the Bible's pages lie the answers to all the problems that mankind has ever known. I hope Americans will read and study the Bible.
Ronald Reagan
#29. In Ronald Reagan's case, he always bore with him this extraordinary ability to radiate confidence, optimism, clarity, a blitheness of spirit, in what other people saw as chaos. And after the 1970s, that was catnip.
Rick Perlstein
#30. America's economic strength depends on industry's ability to improve productivity and quality and to remain on the cutting edge of technology, and that's why the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is so important.
Ronald Reagan
#31. Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense.
Ronald Reagan
#32. Whoa," Madison whistled, craning her neck to examine the chandelier.
"This is even fancier than Red Lobster," Reagan said in awe.
"Look at this rich people's hockey-stick holder," Madison said as she ran a slightly grubby finger along the edge of the antique umbrella stand. "I want one!
Clifford Riley
#33. Pornography is pornography, what is there to see? Movies are attempting to destroy something that's supposed to be the most beautiful thing a man and a woman can have by making it cheap and common. It's what you don't see that's attractive.
Nancy Reagan
#34. I believe in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment, thou shall not speak unfavorably of another Republican.
Renee Ellmers
#35. Meanwhile, what about the workers in those state monopolies that are being put up for sale? I am reminded of a technique for employee ownership that has worked well for many U.S. companies. It goes by various names, but the best known is "Employee Stock Ownership Program," or ESOP.
Ronald Reagan
#36. Presidents have a right to certain prerogatives, including the expectation of a certain deference. He's the president; this is history. But we seem to have come a long way since Ronald Reagan was regularly barked at by Sam Donaldson, almost literally, and the president shrugged it off.
Peggy Noonan
#37. It's not fair to say that Congress spends money like a drunk sailor. At least the sailor is spending his own money!
Ronald Reagan
#38. Met with Jim Watt. He's taking a lot of abuse from environmental extremists but he's absolutely right. People are ecology too and they cant forage for food and live in caves.
Ronald Reagan
#39. For the people of Israel and America are historic partners in the global quest for human dignity and freedom. We will always remain at each other's side.
Ronald Reagan
#40. Reagan won the Cold War by first restoring America's economy and military and then staring down an economically weakened Soviet Union. He knew defeating Russia couldn't be accomplished without laying the groundwork.
Kathleen Troia McFarland
#41. Regardless of your political affiliation, most people agree that Ronald Reagan was an American icon. He was a president of national significance and for that reason he deserves an honor in the nation's capital.
Henry Bonilla
#42. Survival's enough for now, Reagan. And when it isn't, you'll learn to love again. I know that, I believe that about you.
Rachel Higginson
#43. All told, U.S. allies in Central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands, and drove millions into exile.
Greg Grandin
#44. My wife and I just prefer Seattle. It's a beautiful city. Great setting. You open your front door in the morning and the air smells like pine and the sea, as opposed to bus exhaust.
Ron Reagan
#45. California produces 40% of America's fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts - the kind you eat. We have had a bumper crop of the other variety, too.
Ronald Reagan
#46. Environmental extremists ... wouldn't let you build a house unless it looked like a bird's nest.
Ronald Reagan
#47. Looking back as an historian, I find myself having great respect for Ronald Reagan's consistency: his absolute conviction that the Soviet Union - the only competing world empire at the time - was bound to collapse!
Nigel Hamilton
#48. I've got everything I need right here." That sentimental thought met a room full of cheesy and sarcastic "aw's" and an empty water bottle thrown at my head. No, stop guys, really. You're embarrassing me.
Rachel Higginson
#49. The best social program is a productive job for anyone who's willing to work.
Ronald Reagan
#50. It's the [George Bush] president's fiscal policies that have driven up the biggest deficits in American history. He's added more debt to the debt of the United States in four years than all the way from George Washington to Ronald Reagan put together.
John F. Kerry
#51. The White House belongs to all Americans. It's supposed to be something we're proud of.
Nancy Reagan
#52. The press is dying to paint me as now trying to undo the New Deal. I remind them I voted for F.D.R. 4 times. I'm trying to undo the "Great Society." It was L.B.J.'s war on poverty that led to our present mess.
Ronald Reagan
#53. I won't hold my opponent's youth and inexperience against him.
Ronald Reagan
#54. When I was operating as one of President Reagan's economic advisers, an early assignment was to analyze the federal government's landholdings and make recommendations about what to do with them. This was a big job. These lands are vast, covering an area six times that of France.
Steve Hanke
#55. What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones; often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they'll tell you it's all that they learned in their struggles along the way; yes, it's what they learned from failing.
Ronald Reagan
#56. When he hung up on Nancy Reagan, that's when he crossed his final threshold.
David Gergen
#57. John Kerry suspended his campaign for five days this week in honor of President Reagan. And right now, he's ahead in the polls. How's that make him feel? Disappears for a week and he's up in the polls. What else can he do now but go into hiding.
Jay Leno
#58. It's always written that my father was a rich, conservative John Bircher. That is untrue. He was not rich. He was not a John Bircher.
Nancy Reagan
#59. I first met Kim Dae Jung when he was a Korean dissident whose life was threatened by the military regime ruling in Seoul. I was Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Kim was directed to me because the East Asia Bureau at the State Department had long shunned him.
Elliott Abrams
#60. Don't expect me to tell you apart," Reagan said when this became a routine.
"I have short hair," Wren said. "and she wears glasses."
"Stop," Reagan groaned, "don't make me look at you. It's like The Shining in here.
Rainbow Rowell
#61. America was founded by people who believe that God was their rock of safety. I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it's all right to keep asking if we're on His side.
Ronald Reagan
#62. For centuries the Bible's emphasis on compassion and love for our neighbor has inspired institutional and governmental expressions of benevolent outreach such as private charity, the establishment of schools and hospitals, and the abolition of slavery.
Ronald Reagan
#63. My Turn is the distilled bathwater of Mrs. Reagan's life. It is for the most part sweetish, with a tart edge of rebuke, but disappointingly free of dirt or particulate matter of any kind.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#64. My liberal friends love to dismiss Reagan. You know, they'll say something like, 'Oh, didn't he, like, only read one-page memos when he was in the White House?' Well, that's just good managerial practice. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt made people write one-page memos.
Rick Perlstein
#65. Don't give up on your ideals. Don't compromise. Don't turn to expediency. And for heaven's sake ... don't get cynical.
Ronald Reagan
#66. I consider Ronald Reagan one of the greatest U.S. presidents since the World War II because of his staunch resistance to Communism and his efforts to defend human rights,
Yelena Bonner
#67. When you were a teenager in Colorado, the way to be a punk rocker was to rip on Reagan and Bush and what they were doing and talk about how everyone in Colorado's a redneck with a gun and all this stuff.
Trey Parker
#68. I don't talk about political matters. That's not my department.
Nancy Reagan
#69. America must remain freedom's staunchest friend, for freedom is our best ally and it is the world's only hope to conquer poverty and preserve peace.
Ronald Reagan
#70. Our nation was built and civilized by men and women who used guns in self-defense and in pursuit of peace. One wonders indeed, if the rising crime rate, isn't due as much as anything to the criminal's instinctive knowledge that the average victim no longer has means of self-protection.
Ronald Reagan
#71. Prepare yourself for some bad news: Ronald Reagan's library just burned down. Both books were destroyed. But the real horror: He hadn't finished coloring either one of them.
Gore Vidal
#72. There are bigger stars out there than me. But I went through my s-, as people do as they get older.
Reagan Gomez-Preston
#73. Throughout Ronnie's presidency, there was an ongoing public discussion as to how much influence the first lady should have on the president. It's hardly a new problem. As long as mankind has lived in groups, there's always been a question of how to handle the boss's wife.
Nancy Reagan
#74. Reagan's half a disciple of Benjamin Franklin. He believes in early to bed.
Lyn Nofziger
#75. Right now, if there's a gender gap problem, it's not Ronald Reagan with women; it's with Walter Mondale with men.
Patrick Caddell
#76. Ronald Reagan is not a typical politician because he doesn't know how to lie, cheat, and steal. He's always had an agent for that.
Bob Hope
#77. If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it.
David Horowitz
#79. President Reagan is now at rest. We mourn his passing, but we are grateful for the gifts he gave us: a safer world, strong economic base, and a renewed belief in America's greatness.
Elton Gallegly
#80. I know that our country is strongest when we lead the world, when we lead strong alliances. And that's the way Eisenhower and Reagan and Kennedy and others did it.
John F. Kerry
#81. Reagan's emotional intelligence, his ability to suss out people's longings and to channel them for political purposes, was better than just about any human being that ever lived.
Rick Perlstein
#82. Reagan has become the Right's Obama: a man whose every action is to be treated as ipso facto brilliant, perhaps even divinely inspired.
Thomas E. Woods Jr.
#83. Poverty is a career for lot's of well paid people
Ronald Reagan
#84. There's a big, wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It's exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don't cheat yourselves out of this promise.
Nancy Reagan
#85. Barack Obama's discovering what a nightmare dealing with hostage problems is - a discovery previously made by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, i don't see a lot of room for change in American policy.
Bruce Riedel
#86. I'd be surprised if Ronald Reagan doesn't run again. To us it's a second term. To him it's a double feature.
Robert Orben
#87. Our goals are the same as those of the U.N.'s founders, who sought to replace a world at war with one where the rule of law would prevail, where human rights were honored, where development would blossom, where conflict would give way to freedom from violence.
Ronald Reagan
#88. For a time, we forgot the American dream isn't one of making government bigger, it's keeping faith with the mighty spirit of free people under God
Ronald Reagan
#89. Jarecki's 'Reagan' is a compellingly watchable and appropriately conflicted portrait ... artfully nuanced and intellectually curious.
Hank Stuever
#90. You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down.
Ronald Reagan
#91. The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.
Ronald Reagan
#92. Our liberties, our values, all for which America stands is safe today because brave men and women have been ready to face the fire at freedom's front. And we thank God for them.
Ronald Reagan
#93. Ironically, tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and unwelcome evidence is actually President Reagan's true legacy, as I noted in 'The Nation' back in 2000, before the current right-wing mania for President Reagan gained its full force.
Eric Alterman
#94. The thing which Reagan did, which was great, was he won the people. He marginalized the media. And that's what you need, an intellectual agility.
Greg Gutfeld
#95. The Founding Fathers believed that faith in God was the key to our being a good people and America's becoming a great nation.
Ronald Reagan
#96. Religion may indeed inspire acts of great kindness and courage. But it also trains people to believe things for which there is no evidence. This makes religion's intrusion into the political sphere all the more troubling.
Ron Reagan
#97. I believe that it is not enough, as I said, to tinker at the margins of U.S. immigration law ... the United States must institute comprehensive reforms that conform to the realities of the era in which we live.
Ronald Reagan
#98. Few remember that there was no significant US homeless population before the 1980s, that Ronald Reagan's new society and economy created these swollen ranks of street people. Even
Rebecca Solnit
#99. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.
Ronald Reagan
#100. They were very short, the golden years. The golden years are when you can sit back, hopefully, and exchange memories. And that's the worst part about this disease. There's nobody to exchange memories with.
Nancy Reagan
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