Ronald Reagan Quotes

I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.

There is despair, Mr President, in the faces of those you do not see; in the places that you do not visit.

Our tax code is arcane, burdensome and unwieldy. In the years since Ronald Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act, the code has gone from fewer than 30,000 pages to more than 70,000.

I put it out before the American people, got 306 electoral college votes…270 which you need, that was laughable. We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

Trust but verify. Doveryai no proveryai.

Since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office promising to scale back the federal government, Republican leaders have promised to cut regulation and taxes, and to return power to individuals to arrange their lives as they see fit. But they have never entirely managed to eradicate the New Deal government.

Overruling the Joint Chiefs of staff, overruling the State Department, overruling the CIA, President Reagan Authorized providing Stinger Missiles to the Mujahedeen Afghanis.

The idea that an overweening federal government is a threat to both freedom and equality (not to mention prosperity) goes back to Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and some other fairly respectable personages. You can disagree with them, or with Coolidge or Reagan or Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or George Will, but to dismiss them as nothing more than mouthpieces of the wealthy and big business is to indulge in [a] sort of anti-intellectualism…

The first time I began to really think about politics was in fifth grade, during President Reagan's first term.

I actually think that Republican administrations are better for music. The Reagan era was such a great era for punk and indie rock.

Over the past 100 years, there have been three major periods of tax-rate cuts in the U.S.: the Harding-Coolidge cuts of the mid-1920s; the Kennedy cuts of the mid-1960s; and the Reagan cuts of the early 1980s. Each of these periods of tax cuts was remarkably successful as measured by virtually any public policy metric.

Yes, Ronald Reagan did sleep through cabinet meetings—and deservedly so. They were incredibly tedious. I know; I was there.

Let's face it. If I was funnier than Ronald Reagan, I would have won in 1980. And he'd be up here tonight trying to laugh away the Bush deficit.

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.

Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.

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

The Hollywood of Frank Capra's era, when Reagan became a minor star, sold the world an image of American pith and patriotism in many ways as defining as the moon landing or the A-bomb.

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.

'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.

Everything is about looking for happiness and God. That was a sentiment shared by my dear friend Ronald Reagan.

The worst mistake Ronald Reagan ever made was to accept George W. Bush as his running mate.

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

Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" Reagan wondered. "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx.

You'll notice that Nancy Reagan never drinks water when Ronnie speaks.