Top 1200 President Ronald Reagan Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Donald Trump praised Russia's strong man, Vladimir Putin, even taking the astonishing step of suggesting that he prefers the Russian president to our American president. I was just thinking about all of the presidents that would just be looking at one another in total astonishment. What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks America's generals and heaps praise on Russia's president? I think we know the answer.

Ronald Reagan said "trust, but verify." President [Barack] Obama is "trust, but vilify." He trusts our enemies and vilifies everyone who disagrees with him.

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.

National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.

President Obama had a few historians at the White House for a couple of dinners. I was lucky enough to be one of those asked, and he was very interested in Ronald Reagan, and I came away feeling that.

Trump is not a conservative and has no conservative agenda. If elected president, he would not govern as the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

'Family Ties,' to me, was strictly '80s. It was from the beginning of the '80s until the end of the '80s, and it was very specific to that time. Ronald Reagan was president.

Take the [1980] Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan debate. Carter kept trying to imply that somehow Ronald Reagan was going to push the button, or was irresponsible with nuclear war. You might have been able to make the case that Carter was responsible. But it's very tough when you see a person with Reagan's nice-guy persona up there to believe this guy somehow wants nuclear war, that he somehow wants to antagonize the Russians into an attack. It's just not credible; it doesn't cut with what all your other senses are telling you.

Donald Trump is producing the kind of shoot-the-moon economic recovery that we last saw under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He's copied a lot of the Reagan playbook: Deregulate, cut taxes, promote American energy.

I have a huge crush on President George W. Bush. I saw him at a recent fundraiser, and he`s a babe. He`s got that Ronald Reagan charm. I think he`s hot. I respect his wife, but if he wasn`t married I`d be putting on my cowboy boots and coming around.

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.

I was a graduate student in 1984 when President Ronald Reagan called for the construction of a new space station. I knew then that I wanted to apply for the astronaut program, and this was an exciting development.

Ronald Reagan's vision of smaller government, less taxes, and a strong national defense has led to a prosperous America. As president, he rebuilt our military and reinvigorated our confidence in ourselves.

As prime minister, I worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the most important years of all our lives. We talked regularly both before and after his presidency. And I have had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president.

My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview.

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

When Ronald Reagan spoke a thing aloud, he believed it forever and for always. By the time he started running for president, in 1976, he had already developed an unwavering and steadfast faith in the correctness of whatever came out of his mouth.

If you study how Ronald Reagan won first the 1980 election and then in 1984, what Reagan did is what Trump is going to do, and that is pull in a tremendous amount of blue-collar workers who have felt abandoned by the Democrats.

I learned everything I ever need to know about questioning artful dodgers by covering the most artful of them all, Ronald Reagan. For Reagan, performance was as much a part of governing as understanding the details of the federal budget.

There's the unique case of Ronald Reagan, who cited [founders] some 850 times, and in a way that was absolutely fundamental to understanding Reagan's vision for America.

To be sure, administrations since Ronald Reagan had gone out of their way to massage and 'spin' news to the president's advantage, while the media did its best to un-spin it.

I remember when Ronald Reagan was president he said 'if the American people obeyed the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule we wouldn't have any problems.' The first time I heard him say it I thought, 'That's too simplistic.' There are complicated problems back there. But you analyze it, he's right.

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.

When President Ronald Reagan negotiated some significant arms reduction deals with the then-Soviet Union, he was considered a real hero, someone who was advocating for peace.

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.

My friend Michael Reagan has given us the blueprint for a new Reagan revolution- and he has given Ronald Reagan back to us again. Read it, learn it, live it, love it!

There's one difference between me and them: I know I'm not qualified. In my opinion, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't qualified to be governor of California. Ronald Reagan wasn't qualified to be governor, let alone president. I was a vice president of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president. My duties consisted of attending meetings and voting. The only thing I remember is that Ronnie never had an original thought and that we had to tell him what to say. That's no way to run a union, let along a state or a country.

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.

Nancy Reagan actually took some movies that she didn't want to take because they were [with Ronald Reagan] really strapped for cash.

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.

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.

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

Well, I think the reality is that as you study - when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth. They expanded the economy. They expand tax revenues.

Now that Ronald Reagan's place in history is secure, liberals are trying to remake him. A pernicious myth is that Reagan and Tip O'Neill were great friends.

Ronald Reagan in the US was not a particularly popular president, but after his death sectors of wealth and power created a huge propaganda campaign that converted this disgraceful figure into a semi-divinity.

President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era.

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.

We don't have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.

For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the United States, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here.

When the Democrat Party lost to Ronald Reagan in two landslides, it was the American people's fault. It was Reagan's fault.

When Ronald Reagan's administration was exposed for having illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money covertly for the Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, Reagan acknowledged that the evidence was damning - yet defended the principle behind the scheme.

It was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired. In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President [Ronald] Reagan, who called them "freedom fighters."

Soviet foreign ministers would come in to see the president all the time, routinely. Jimmy Carter stopped that after the invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan resumed it in 1984, I think. And so the fact of a meeting like that I think is not that big a deal.

He may not have been a good actor, and I personally don't think he was a good president, but I'll tell you this: Ronald Reagan was a helluva character.

At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready.

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.

When President Ronald Reagan asked me a stupid question once, I called him an idiot in public! I thought I was going to be arrested, but he laughed and appreciated me.

You just want to love Tim Matheson and just cuddle him. He's really - and he's gorgeous. He has much in common with [Ronald Reagan] Reagan's outward persona.

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.

When Grover Norquist launched his project to name anything and everything after Ronald Reagan, I humbly proposed that the deficit be re-christened 'the Reagan.'

Ronald Reagan was this actor who was going to be president, and he was very charming. What he had was, he talked about America in ways that got people all caught up in it. He was creating this America - it could even be the mythical "America" - that we subscribe to.

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."

Regarding Ronald Reagan: In point of fact, the image of Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for shaping that decade (the 1980s), should be carved into Mount Rushmore, minted into coins, and emblazoned in a place of honor in every school child's history text as a constant reminder of this great man's contributions to world freedom, national pride, and individual prosperity. With the truth, the term 'Reaganomics' will be used only as a term of endearment and respect.

Ronald Reagan succeeded in bringing down the Iron Curtain by showing strength and resolutely standing up to the Soviet Union. President Trump needs to be similarly resolute towards Putin.

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.

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.

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."

In the past, the U.S. has shown its capacity to reinvent its gifts for leadership. During the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Nixon abdication and the Ford and Carter presidencies, the whole nation peered into the abyss, was horrified by what it saw and elected Ronald Reagan as president, which began a national resurgence.

Under Ronald Reagan, hatred of the liberal media took on a storybook quality. Reagan had honed his political skills as a spokesman for General Electric.

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.