Top 320 Reagan Quotes

I am clearly more popular than Reagan. I am in my third term. Where’s Reagan? Gone after two! Defeated by George Bush and Michael Dukakis no less.

I was on the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier. That’s an experience I’ll never forget.

Movement Conservatism was a fringe force from the 1950s until the 1980s, when voters elected Movement Conservative Ronald Reagan to the White House. But even then, their control of the Republican Party was not a given.

I think the Reagan people are superb marketers. Their whole approach to polling, to television, to the symbolism and the rest approaches genius.

In the event of the death of a current or former President, like the recent death of President Ronald Reagan, the flag should be flown at half-staff for thirty days from the day of the death.

One of President Reagan’s first and wisest initiatives was to effectively shutdown the anti-trust division of the Justice Department.

I’m particularly happy that the Ronald Reagan Building is both public and private, and embraces his lifelong belief… in free and open trade.

All of us who covered the Reagans agreed that President Reagan was personable and charming, but I’m not so certain he was nice. It’s hard for me to think of anyone as ‘nice’ when I hear him say ‘The homeless are homeless because they want to be homeless.’

Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California. He had earned the right to be considered for President of the United States. You learn a lot about a person by the way they have served. None of this applies to Trump. There’s no disclosure with him. I just think the man is a very troubled, emotional mess.

Our tax code is arcane, burdensome and unwieldy. In the years since Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act, the code has gone from fewer than 30,000 pages to more than 70,000.

Mr. Reagan spent World War II, the global conflict fought and won by his generation, making training films in Hollywood.

I have very little respect for Nancy Reagan. There is something about her that is very petty.

Reagan was the conservative Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Ronald Reagan’s legacy is deeply misunderstood because there are political actors in America who, for several reasons, have privately held agendas that they want to sell to the American public in the most appealing way possible. They often find the best way to do that is to package their product with the Reagan brand.

Limbaugh can rightly be said to be the greatest populist expositor of conservatism in America since Reagan, and the link between the Reagan generation and the so-called Rush Babies.

I worked at the White House in the early Reagan administration at a time when the deficit rocket really started to take off.

I wonder if these people today would think Reagan was a Reagan conservative.

Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union.

In 1980, in 1984, millions of middle-class Democrats became Reagan Democrats, and more of them drifted toward the Republicans with Bush in 1988.

Reagan didn’t socialize with the press. He spent his evenings with Nancy, watching TV with dinner trays. But he knew that to transcend, you can’t condescend.

The villains will come along. There were plenty in the Carter administration, and there will be plenty with Reagan.

Since Ronald Reagan we have had this assumption in the United States that the Republicans are the party of the military, the Republicans are the party of patriotism, the Republicans are the party of American values.

It wasn’t like anybody said, ‘Oh, Ronald Reagan will have a landslide in 1980.’ In fact, you look back at the Dukakis numbers, the Perot numbers, there was always this presumption that the Republican was going to lose. Not just that the Democrat would win, but that the Republican was going to lose.

Mad or glad, Mr. Reagan is head over heels in love with Mrs. Reagan and can’t even imagine a world without her – He loves her.

We have to bring back that Reagan optimism.

Conservative statesmen from Alexander Hamilton to Ronald Reagan sometimes supported protectionism, and at other times, they leaned toward lowering barriers. But they always understood that trade policy was merely a tool for building a strong and independent country with a prosperous middle class.

The first time I began to really think about politics was in fifth grade, during President Reagan’s first term.

I helped Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp develop supply-side economics.

Having worked for him in the nuclear weapons policy business, I can tell you that President Reagan was committed to assuring the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent.

Often dismissed or underestimated by political opponents, President Reagan had the most valuable weapon in the political arsenal: a bond with the people.

I wanted to be a senator from Illinois. I was obsessed with politics. My dad was friends with a lot of local politicians, so I would hang out with them on Election Day and hand out buttons. Somehow, even though they were opposite, I loved Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I thought they were the coolest guys!

By supporting Reagan, evangelicals were not supporting womanizing or divorce, but they were endorsing Reagan’s policies.

Ronald Reagan never did much to make abortion illegal. He did, however, deliver videotaped greetings, fulsome in praise for his hosts, to antiabortion rallies on the Mall.

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.

So I would say Reagan was the best, and certainly Clinton the worst.

While Democrats may never adopt the policies of Ronald Reagan, they should follow his golden rule of politics closely. Reagan adamantly instructed his party members to never publicly criticize another Republican.

Those who remember Washington’s cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan’s intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva – alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! – with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.

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.

Actually, my wine was served at the White House twice. Reagan must have been asleep when he ordered it.

As a candidate, Obama projected himself as a new Reagan, above narrow party politics. He wanted to please all but has ended up annoying many.

Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You’re not Ronald Reagan. You can’t run as him; you can’t relive his career. You can’t just have somebody else’s career. You have to be you.

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.

Tonight, I want to say to every member of the democratic party, who believes in limited government, in personal opportunity and the united States constitution, and a safe and secure America, come home. To the Reagan Democrats, your party has left you. And the Republican party wants you, we welcome you back.

There’s a reason why, when Reagan became president, he started getting rid of regulations, and we had a booming economy.

Almost all first ladies have had tremendous power on personnel issues, whether the public realized it or not, whether it was Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan or whoever.

My feeling is that it’s a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War.

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

Ronald Reagan, of course, was a Republican governor of California who went through a painful defeat in the 1976 presidential race before winning four years later.

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.

Again, President Reagan was sort of an amiable presence out at the ranch by the last 6 months of his presidency. He had no effect on national policy at all.

Always the eternal optimist, President Reagan instilled confidence and optimism at a time both were in short supply in our country.

When you tax capital gains income, you don’t help the economy, you hurt the economy, which is why President Kennedy, President Reagan, President Clinton and President Bush all believed we should have a lower rate for capital gains.

Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I’m such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate.

Reagan himself, for much of his life, was devoted against the elites. His antagonism to the Soviet Union is antagonism against oppression by the elites of the many.