Top 38 Quotes & Sayings by Ron Reagan

I couldn't join a party that, frankly, tolerates members who are bigots for one thing, homophobes, racists.

I'm aware that most people who meet me for the first time think of me in a certain way because of who my father is. That just comes with the territory. But that's been that way ever since I was a little kid as long as I can remember. I grew up that way.

My father was not a bully. I almost never heard him raise his voice to anybody.

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.

He had written my mother once that he wanted her to be the first thing he saw every morning and the last thing he ever saw. And that's how it turned out.

My father didn't know George W. Bush from Adam.

I mow my own lawn.

Neither of my parents would ever stand in the way of any of their children speaking their minds.

I have to say that flying on Air Force One sort of spoils you for coach on a regular airline.

My father never felt the need to wrap himself in anybody's mantle. He never felt the need to pretend to be anybody else. This is their administration. This is their war. If they can't stand on their own two feet, well, they're no Ronald Reagans, that's for sure.

I've been to Reagan National Airport. I tell people it was named after me.

When you hear somebody justifying a war by citing the Almighty, I get a little worried, frankly.

We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.

I mean, we've had all these awful pictures from the prison in Iraq and these sort of memos floating around about justifying torture, all this kind of stuff. And it makes you want to take a shower, you know?

I could share an hour of warm camaraderie with Dad, then once I'd walked out the door, get the uncanny feeling I'd disappeared into the wings of his mind's stage, like a character no longer necessary to the ongoing story line.

John McCain knows as well as anyone that Sarah Palin has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office. I'm sorry, it's got nothing to do with the fact that she wears skirts - she's grossly unqualified.

Now, ignorance is one thing, ignorance can be cured. But many of the Republican leaders opposing this research know better.

The joke in our family is that we can cry reading the phone book.

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.

Stem cell research can revolutionize medicine, more than anything since antibiotics.

My father was a public figure all my life, and so the presidency was an extension of that. I guess you get used to it, though you can stand back occasionally and think, 'Boy, this is really weird!'

You cannot be against embryonic stem cell research and be intellectually and therefore morally consistent, if you're not also against in vitro fertilization.

My father felt that children should make their own way.

We have three cats. It's like having children, but there is no tuition involved.

You look at women at the Republican convention and women at the Democratic convention. Republicans have a certain aesthetic beauty that involves more makeup, bigger hair, more lurid outfits.

I admire the fact that the central core of Buddhist teaching involves mindfulness and loving kindness and compassion.

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.

Now, ignorance is one thing, ignorance can be cured. But many of the Republican leaders opposing this research know better.

The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job. What's his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?

People who believe they are acting with the mandate of God, who see others who don't share their beliefs as inferior in the eyes of God, make dangerous leaders. Just ask Osama Bin Laden.

He never stopped wanting to save the world.

The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he's in now (Alzheimer's Syndrome). Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's - these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people.

If you are going to call yourself a Christian - and I don't - then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight - it has put them in greater danger.

It's just that I have this funny objection to torturing small animals no matter how scrumptious their body parts might be. ... Our food industries are equal opportunity abusers: cows, chickens, pigs, and a special mention to those little calves who for their short, miserable lives are locked into crates too small to allow movement just so we can eat veal.

You know, people get frustrated because their loved ones who have Alzheimer's, oh, he doesn't recognize me anymore, how can I recognize this person, if they don't recognize me? They're not the same person. Well, they are the same person, but they've got a brain disease. And it's not their fault they've got this disease.

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man... , But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians - wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.

I've never joined any political party and have no plans to do so. I'm fully independent.

I would be unelectable. I'm an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won't accept.