Ronald Reagan Quotes

Our founding fathers never intended that Congress be a career.

I like lots of career politicians; I'm not against all career politicians.

I have no intention of running for office again.

I may have come into politics with an unacknowledged condescension toward the game and the people who played it, but I left with more respect for politicians than when I went in. The worst of them - the careerists and predators - you find in all professions. The best of them were a credit to democracy.

I have no ambitions to be a cabinet minister, or prime minister. I wouldn't wish being prime minister on my worst enemy.

I'm not going to rule out running for a second term. But, I think you have to be psychologically prepared to walk away from the job after four years. It's the only way that you cannot be influenced by those special interests.

I loved every day I was in politics. But I got out at the right time. I never miss it.

Yeah, well I'm not aspiring to be the Prime Minister.

I think we need people in Washington who really have more of a sense of a George Washington approach to it, which is to serve and go home. I think far too many of both parties see it as a career. And I don't think that's good for our country.

But always I was a private citizen whose activities in government or political party were appointive.

I was not born to be prime minister, and I'm not going to stay here until the end of my life. I'm too young for that.

Whenever people say, 'You should be president,' I say, 'I thought you liked me.' Listen, I thought being mayor of Stamford was a wonderful job. Being governor of a state for a period of time is a wonderful job, and I'm not sure I'm at all attracted to Washington.

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier, Christmas Day of 1982, just after I had been first elected to a full term, that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

I'm honored to have served for 18 years as Arizona's 10th Senator - and for four terms in the House of Representatives before that.

If I can go from burglar for the government to talk show host, you can go from entertainer to congressman.

I never believed that my service in the U.S. Congress should become a permanent career.

The idea of being in the State Department was exciting. On the other hand, I always had in the back of my mind going into politics. If I stayed in Washington, I might end up a government hack.

I wanted to have a political career. I thought studying political science would be the best way to achieve it.

After a great deal of thought and discussions with my family, I have decided not to seek re-election in 2014. Politics shouldn't be a career, and I never intended to make it one.

I'm not driven to get back into politics. It's not on my top five things to do before I die, but saying that, I may be in politics in the next year or the next ten years. I've been on the front line for 12 years, four in state government, eight on the national level.

Politics is in my blood. I'd love to be involved in 2008, maybe even '06.

I would rather have a full term in the Senate—a place in which I would feel more consciously able to discharge the duties required, and where there is more chance to make a reputation, and less danger of losing it than four years of the presidency.

The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at a crossroads.

They want what every first term administration wants—a second term.

I formed a great desire to help you be president of the United States. It has seemed to me that if I could perform some service for you that would land you in the Presidency I could perform as great a service for my country as I could perform on the battlefield.