Top 1200 President Reagan Quotes & Sayings

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.

Reagan has been deified by the Republican Party, which is odd. The Reagan that modern Republicans revere is not the real Reagan.

One more item for the delusional Miss Grundys still obtusely citing Reagan as their model of “niceness”: As governor of California, Reagan gave student protesters at Berkeley the finger. Remember that next time you ask yourself: “What would Reagan do?” People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus. Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of Reagan joking about his naps.

During Ronald Reagan's administration, '60 Minutes' ran a segment about the difference between Reagan's rhetoric and Reagan's actions. The show thought it had produced a hard-hitting piece; Reagan's team called up '60 Minutes' to thank them for the 15-minute commercial.

Humor is a marvelous communications tool, as Reagan has demonstrated so well. He has weathered many a storm that others might not have. With Reagan, people just say, 'There he goes again.' A sense of humor allows a president to back off a little from the tensions of the moment and take a calmer view of things.

We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember non-commissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan. That's the kind of President Ronald Reagan was. He helped our country win the Cold War. He put it behind us in a way no one ever believed would be possible. He was truly a great American leader. And those of us in the Armed Forces loved him, respected him, and tremendously admired him for his great leadership.

Effective leadership relationships at a high level include the insertion of a degree of distance from those being served. That may be part of what President Ronald Reagan referred to when he mused that he didn't see how anyone could be president who wasn't an actor.

To be sure, President Clinton reached an accord called "The Agreement" in 1994 that purports to address some of President Reagan's concerns.

President Reagan didn't always know what he knew.

President Reagan's one-liners were terrific.

Nancy Reagan sort of downplayed that, you know - but she was quite successful. At the time she married Ronald Reagan, I think she was keenly aware that [Reagan's first wife] Jane Wyman's career had eclipsed Ronald Reagan's, so she was very determined not to have that happen.

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.

President Reagan has no enemies in the Phillipines.

Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.

Reagan took an approach to the Cold War dramatically different from any other US President. To wit, he thought we should win. This was a fresh concept. At the time, it was widely ridiculed as a dangerous alteration of US policy. Only after it worked was Reagan's dangerous foreign policy recast as merely a continuation of the policies of his predecessors.

Some critics have suggested that Ronald Reagan succeeded in a series of careers, ultimately as a two-term president of the United States, by a series of fortunate accidents. Such a criticism is not backed by the evidence. It is true, though, that Reagan's approach to work and life was not conventional.

Reagan was president and had Democrats control the House and Senate, and they reformed the tax code. Clinton was president, and he had Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole; they reformed welfare and balanced the budget.

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.

Remember when Ronald Reagan was president? We had Bob Hope. We had Johnny Cash. Think about where we are today. We have got President Obama. But we have no hope and we have no cash.

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.

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 mean, if President Reagan could be an actor and become a President, if Michael Douglas is your next choice, maybe I could become an actor. And I've got a good pension; I can work cheap, which is unusual around here.

Reagan is the subject of ongoing political debate, and a lot of liberals don't want to take Reagan any more seriously than they did when he was president. I understand why they don't, but they should.

You know my father as governor, as president, but I knew him as dad. I was so proud to have the Reagan name and to be Ronald Reagan's son.

President Reagan rushed home from Santa Barbara vacation, from the Reagan ranch when the Korean jetliner was shot out of the air by the Russians.

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.

Which founders have these presidents cited - and why? What did, say, President [Ronald] Reagan's view of George Washington, or President [Bill] Clinton's view of Thomas Jefferson, tell us about their view of America and where they intended to lead the country?In many cases, it told us a lot about the president.

I don't think President Obama has been that revolutionary in reaching out to ethnic communities. President Reagan did a lot for the black community that people don't realize.

Every time we've had a pro-growth fundamental tax reform, be it under President Reagan, President Kennedy - you can even go all the way back to President Coolidge - we have seen paychecks increase, economic growth be ignited, and, actually, more revenues come into the government.

President Reagan, expanding on President Lincoln's phrase, referred to America as 'the last, best hope of man on Earth.' But this last, best hope is beginning to fade.

I honestly believe that if I decided to be the president of the United States, I could do it. That might sound foolish to some. But in my mind, if Ronald Reagan can become president, why not Will Smith?

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.

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.

Reagan is held up to us as an example of never raising taxes. Correction: Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years as president. Why? He was a pragmatist, not doctrinaire. He saw problems emerging, and when his policies faltered he changed his views. Flexibility, not rigidity.

Reagan loved and respected his father, Jack Reagan. But if there was a father figure to Reagan in the religious sense, it was Ben Cleaver. What Reagan's father didn't provide spiritually, from a fatherly point of view, Cleaver did.

Ronald Reagan got a lot of democrats. I wish he hadn`t. I got to Congress with Reagan coming to the Whitehouse. The Reagan Program, a very radical one, a very drastic one passed because he had a lot of democrats. He worked at it personally and also because Reagan retained a popularity.

This crisis started probably due to the freedom they gave to the banks. First President [Ronald] Reagan and then President [Bill] Clinton. So, for [Barack] Obama it is extremely difficult to change now, to find a way to organize this banking system [differently].

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.

Well, it is alarming to have a president [Reagan] who doesn't know what he is doing.

Back in 1980, the conservative movement was all-in for Ronald Reagan. Once Reagan won, they all wanted to be on the team. It was a landslide. Everybody wants to bask in that glow. And then as the Reagan years began, then the Republicans, certain members of the party began to individually fall out and start talking about problems they had, secretly telling the media they thought Reagan was a dunce and a danger to world peace, adopting the Democrat line that Reagan's finger on the nuclear button couldn't be trusted.

We had the clip of [Donald] Trump saying: I'm not president of the globe. I'm president of the United States.[Ronald] Reagan would have never said that. [Dwight] Eisenhower would have never said that, because he would have said, yes, I'm president of the United States, but it's in our interests to be securing a world order.

During Mr. Reagan's trip to Europe...members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times--during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope--that they privately christened the trip 'The Big Sleep.'

I'm looking for a president that'll be like a Ronald Reagan to a Jimmy Carter.

President Reagan was the quintessential Happy Warrior, and no one loves, respects, and admires Reagan more than I do.

Even if people aren't Republicans, it doesn't seem shocking to them that Ronald Reagan was the president. Well of course, because Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor! This is not only a bar too low, this is no bar at all. I don't care who you are, you know 20 people smarter than Ronald Reagan. You know 20 people who would be a better president than Ronald Reagan.

In 1980, evangelicals overwhelmingly elected a candidate who was a known womanizer when he was in Hollywood. He would be the first divorced president in U.S. history. His name was Ronald Reagan. And when evangelicals voted for Reagan, they weren't endorsing womanizing. They weren't endorsing divorce. They were endorsing Reagan's policies.

It was simply impossible to support Carter for reelection in 1980 and easy for me to support Reagan. The Reagan campaign was happy to have Democratic support, and the Reagan administration was happy to have Democrats in it; they took the view that, after all, Reagan himself had been a Democrat, so it was not a strike against you.

Like Reagan, President Trump strives for good relations with all nations, including Russia. But no nation, including Russia, should doubt the president's commitment to defending the United States and our allies.

I'm glad Reagan is president. Of course, I'm a professional comedian.

[Dan Fried] served under President [Barack] Obama and under President George W. Bush before that and under President [Bill] Clinton before that and under President George H.W. Bush before that and under [Ronald] Reagan before that and under [Jim] Carter before that. He has been there a long time.

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

Reagan's dead, and he was a lousy President.

We got two examples in recent history from this country. One in the '80s under President Reagan. One under President Clinton and the Democratic-controlled Congress in the '90s. We had nearly 5 percent growth rate in each of those decades. We can do it again for sure.

President Obama has lowered taxes more than he has raised them, and they are today lower than they were in President Reagan's time. But you don't hear conservatives crowing about that.

Ronald Reagan was older than I was when he ran for president.

I'll confess that, from an early age, I was a huge fan of President Reagan because my parents bought me an enormous stuffed monkey that they named President Reagan - yes, I get it now.

If Reince Priebus is, in fact, the chief of staff and operating as chief of staff, he is the most important staffer the president Donald Trump has. And it is not unusual for a president to set up some competing power centers, as Ronald Reagan did, but there`s nothing like being the chief of staff, which has so much say over what the president reads, who the president sees, who`s the last person the president talks to before he makes a decision.

I think Ronald Reagan was the best President of my lifetime.

It was a particular pleasure to examine President Ronald Reagan's leadership. I experienced it first-hand, as a member of his administration in several capacities as well as his 1984 reelection campaign staff. The most common misconception is that Reagan was a bystander to his own career.

Well, my favorite memory of a president was in 1984. I was in the grandstands at Daytona, and maybe I was 20 years old. So just sort of down in Daytona, having a good time for the 500 - or for the 400 in July. And Air Force One lands on the back straightaway. It was President Reagan.