Top 1153 Reagan Quotes & Sayings

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

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.

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

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.

In a gesture to moderate Republicans, Reagan put Bush on his '80 ticket, and Bush recognized that the Reagan crowd was rapidly becoming an overwhelming majority in the party. So he adjusted his views, served Reagan loyally and spent much of his vice presidency using his stature to convince conservative leaders they could trust him.

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.

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.

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.

I'm a Reagan conservative. Reagan did negotiate with the Soviets. But you have to negotiate from a position of strength.

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.

Reagan refused to demonize his foes. Instead he charmed them, with a few exceptions, including Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the embodiment of the liberalism Reagan sought to reverse.

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!

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.

Ronald Reagan just signed the new tax law. But I think he was in Hollywood too long. He signed it, 'Best wishes, Ronald Reagan.'

Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.

One of the things I learned in editing 'The Reagan Diaries' is to never say what Reagan would do, because he surprised people.

John Kerry and the other Democratic leaders are on the wrong side of history, as they were during the Reagan presidency. If they had won the day, and Reagan had failed, the Soviet Union would still exist, as would all the harm and suffering it unleashed, and American security would be far weaker as a result. And if they win this election thanks to a promise to undo the Reagan-Bush Doctrine, those cheering loudest will be the most evil-loving among us.

I talked to Reagan for about six hours all told. and Reagan was willing to go along with it. He didn't look at his watch, and he didn't allow his campaign aides to cut it off.

Ronald Reagan comes out of nowhere, at least as far as these people are concerned in the establishment. I'm telling you, back in 1980, the media and the Washington-New York establishment was as disdainful of Ronald Reagan as they are of Donald Trump.

You are Mrs. Reagan because Mr. Reagan loves you with all his heart.

I just find this interesting that Ronald Reagan was regarded much the way Donald Trump is except Reagan was governor of California. He had run for the nomination the Republican Party in '76. But he was laughed at. They thought he was dumb then. They thought he was slow minded and dim-witted back then. They thought he couldn't speak. They thought Reagan - amazingly, a guy that later became known as the Great Communicator - couldn't speak.

The big lesson of Reagan is: To think that he was some sort of simple figurehead and didn't do the thinking and simply read a script in front of him woefully underestimates him. Ronald Reagan was an extremely intelligent person with a real V8 engine under his hood.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

They said Reagan was too dangerous. It was Reagan who ended the Soviet Union without firing a shot.

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

It may be hard to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980's and because of both Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan - in particular Mrs Reagan - we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it. Something that I really appreciate was her very effective but low-key advocacy, but it penetrated the public conscience, and people began to say "hey we have to do something about this too.

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.

Reagan didn't want to wear his faith on his sleeve in a political way. Reagan thought that was egregious, and he was first turned off by it in the 1976 campaign when he thought Jimmy Carter was doing it. Reagan simply did not want ever to appear to be using faith for political purposes.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

To say that Reagan teaches us that we should be against amnesty for illegal immigrants is to contradict what Reagan himself stood for - that he was in favor of amnesty.

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.

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.

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

I would like to think that we are on a move that could be like [Ronald] Reagan. Reagan appealed to the average working American: their patriotism, their love of country, the belief in their schools and their communities and their loyalty to the military and police, and the things that create stability and a good life.

Why are there so many young conservatives now serving our country? I'll tell you why? Because we grew up in an era of Reagan. And Ronald Reagan looked and acted nothing like Donald Trump and look at the Democrats.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The inaugural of Ronald Reagan, with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. And that was the greatest thing. Ronald Reagan and George Bush. That was - I still remember like it was yesterday.

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.

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

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.

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.

I was so proud to have the Reagan name and to be Ronald Reagan's son. What a great honor.

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.

This is a true story. The day after Reagan won, I was walking into the courthouse when someone said that they'd bet Reagan would appoint me U.S. attorney.

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.