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Ronald Reagan Quotes (1911-2004)
President, Actor, Politician
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About Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 February 1911 – 5 June 2004) was an American politician and actor, who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975, following a career as a Hollywood actor and union leader. He was the husband of Jane Wyman (1940–1949) and Nancy Davis (married in 1952).
Best Ronald Reagan Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Ronald Reagan quotes.
“Conservation means freezing in the dark.”
Moments after being shot in 1981, Ronald Reagan quipped "I hope you're all Republican" to the surgeons about to operate, lightening the tension with his trademark humor.
“I hope you're all Republican.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1980s, First term of office
Frustrated by a silenced microphone at a 1980 Republican debate he was funding, Ronald Reagan famously declared, "I am paying for this microphone!"
“I am paying for this microphone!”
- Ronald Reagan, 1980s)
Just before the 1995 government shutdowns, an unnamed source reportedly suggested a drastic test of the government's perceived importance: "Let's close the place down and see if anybody notices."
“Let's close the place down and see if anybody notices.”
- Ronald Reagan, Post-presidency
“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1980s, First term of office
Reagan, defending a 1960 letter where he likened Kennedy's policies to Marxism, Hitler's "State Socialism," and benevolent monarchy, declared its contents unobjectionable.
“If you read the letter, you will find there is nothing wrong with it.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1980s, First term of office
Amidst student unrest at UC Berkeley in 1970, Governor Reagan's inflammatory "bloodbath" remark, though later softened, reflected a hardline stance against campus disruptions.
“If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1970s)
“If Fascism Ever Comes to America, It Will Come in the Name of Liberalism.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1970s)
“Well, I learned a lot. ... You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1980s, First term of office
“Balancing the budget is like protecting your virtue , you have to learn how to say no.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1970s)
“Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1980s, First term of office
“I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day.”
- Ronald Reagan, 1980s, Second term of office
Ronald Reagan Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Ronald Reagan quotes by topic.
Ronald Reagan on Abortion 6 quotes
“I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.”
Ronald Reagan on United States 5 quotes
View all 5 quotes on United States →Ronald Reagan on Iran-Contra affair 4 quotes
View all 4 quotes on Iran-Contra affair →Ronald Reagan on Christmas 4 quotes
“At this special time of year, we all renew our sense of wonder in recalling the story of the first Christmas in Bethlehem, nearly 2,000 year ago. Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great and good philosopher and teacher. Others of us believe in the Divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that He was and is the promised Prince of Peace. . . . Tonight, in millions of American homes, the glow of the Christmas tree is a reflection of the love Jesus taught us. . . . Christmas means so much because of one special child.”
Ronald Reagan on 1980s 4 quotes
“Looking back at the recent history of the world, I find it amazing how far civilization has retrogressed so quickly. As recently as World War I — granted the rules were violated at times — we had a set of rules of warfare in which armies didn’t make war against civilians: Soldiers fought soldiers. Then came World War II and Hitler’s philosophy of total war, which meant the bombing not only of soldiers but of factories that produced their rifles, and, if surrounding communities were also hit, that was to be accepted; then, as the war progressed, it became common for the combatants simply to attack civilians as part of military strategy. By the time the 1980s rolled around, we were placing our entire faith in a weapon whose fundamental target was the civilian population.”
Ronald Reagan on Perestroika 4 quotes
“But change would not mean rejection of the past. Like a tree growing strong through the seasons, rooted in the Earth and drawing life from the Sun, so, too, positive change must be rooted in traditional values -- in the land, in culture, in family and community -- and it must take its life from the eternal things, from the source of all life, which is faith. Such change will lead to new understandings, new opportunities, to a broader future in which the tradition is not supplanted but finds its full flowering. That is the future beckoning to your generation. At the same time, we should remember that reform that is not institutionalized will always be insecure. Such freedom will always be looking over its shoulder. A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back. And that is why, in my conversation with General Secretary Gorbachev, I have spoken of how important it is to institutionalize change -- to put guarantees on reform. And we've been talking together about one sad reminder of a divided world: the Berlin Wall. It's time to remove the barriers that keep people apart.”
Ronald Reagan on Republican Party (United States) 3 quotes
Following a 1981 assassination attempt, a wounded Ronald Reagan quipped, "I hope you're all Republican" to his surgeons, eliciting a unifying response.
“I hope you're all Republican.”
- Ronald Reagan, R)
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Ronald Reagan on Information age 3 quotes
“In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place—a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications.”
Ronald Reagan on Cold War 3 quotes
“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Ronald Reagan on 20th century 3 quotes
“To many of us now, computers, silicon chips, data processing, cybernetics, and all the other innovations of the dawning high technology age are as mystifying as the workings of the combustion engine must have been when that first Model T rattled down Main Street, U.S.A. But as surely as America's pioneer spirit made us the industrial giant of the 20th century, the same pioneer spirit today is opening up on another vast front of opportunity, the frontier of high technology.”
Ronald Reagan on Peace 2 quotes
“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.”
Ronald Reagan on Fate 2 quotes
“I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”
What Ronald Reagan Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Ronald Reagan shared regarding contemporaries.
Ronald Reagan on Jimmy Carter 5 quotes
“Does Mr. Carter really believe that the American people are not capable of rebuilding our economy? If he does, that is even one more reason - along with his record - that he should not be President.”
Ronald Reagan on Roe v. Wade 3 quotes
“Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. The decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.”
Ronald Reagan on Leonid Brezhnev 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Leonid Brezhnev →Ronald Reagan on Robert F. Kennedy 2 quotes
“Robert Kennedy's service to his country, his commitment to his great ideals, and his devotion to those less fortunate than himself are matters now for history and need little explanation from me. The facts of Robert Kennedy's public career stand alone. He roused the comfortable. He exposed the corrupt, remembered the forgotten, inspired his countrymen, and renewed and enriched the American conscience.”
Ronald Reagan on Mikhail Gorbachev 2 quotes
“Whatever his reasons, Gorbachev had the intelligence to admit Communism was not working, the courage to battle for change, and, ultimately, the wisdom to introduce the beginnings of democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise. As I said at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, the Soviet Union faced a choice: Either it made fundamental changes or it became obsolete. Gorbachev saw the handwriting on the Wall and opted for change.”
Ronald Reagan on Refugee 2 quotes
“Not long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, 'We don't know how lucky we are.' And the Cuban stopped and said, 'How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.' And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
- Ronald Reagan, R)
Ronald Reagan on Maxwell D. Taylor
“A soldier's soldier and a statesman's statesman.”
Ronald Reagan on Ariel Sharon
Ronald Reagan on Vladimir Lenin
Ronald Reagan on Cicero
Facing ageism in 1984, Ronald Reagan cleverly deflected concerns by invoking a paraphrased, albeit misattributed, classical defense of elders' crucial role in guiding a nation.
“... It was Seneca or it was Cicero, I don't know which, that said, "If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state."”
Ronald Reagan on Bill Clinton
Ronald Reagan on Benito Mussolini
In 1976, Ronald Reagan controversially attributed the New Deal's inspiration to Mussolini's fascist economic policies, claiming it echoed early New Dealers' admiration.
“Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time."”
Quotes About Ronald Reagan
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Ronald Reagan from others.
Yehuda Amichai on Ronald Reagan
“When I was eighteen, I joined the British army for four years. I served in Egypt and the western desert: Palestinian [Jewish!] units were kept distant from combat zones. After that came a year in the Hagana [pre-State Israeli army], mainly smuggling arms. Such experience makes one wonder how someone like Reagan, who has never been under fire, can order others to fight and shoot. It's crazy! Immoral!”
Margaret Atwood on Ronald Reagan
“Political pundits have a saying that a great leader needs three things: brains, heart, and guts, or its modern variant, balls. Churchill, for example, had all three. Now start doing your own sums: FDR surely had all three; Nixon had brains and guts, but not much heart. Reagan had a good facsimile of a heart, but not much of a brain...”
Source on Ronald Reagan 19 quotes
“The rage murder is new. It appeared under Reagan, during his cultural economic revolution, and it expanded in his aftermath. Reaganomics has ruled America ever since. For all of the Right's hysterical attacks on Clinton as a left-winger, the fact is that it was Clinton who administered a lethal injection to the welfare system with his Orwellian-named Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Under Clinton, Wall Street floruished with greater deregulation, globalization accelerated as never before, downsizings soared, and the anti-union, pro-shareholder corporate culture that Reagan launched went from being a radical experiment to a way of life. By the time George W. Bush took office, the cultural-economic transformation had become so deeply entrenched that what once would have been considered extreme and unacceptable was cheered and praised, even by those who suffered. The change was radical and traumatic, so much so that historians may look back at this time and wonder why there weren't more murders and rebellions, just as it is shocking today to consider how few slave rebellions there were. (p. 87)”
Joan Baez on Ronald Reagan
“I am thinking that Ronald Reagan is the same age as my father. They have some things in common. They are both young in spirit, buoyant, well-preserved, and optimistic. Beyond that, I can find only outstanding differences. The President is either ignorant of, or unconcerned by the ills of the world about which my father and I have been speaking. He is particularly immune to any part America may have in engendering these ills, as he dislikes the inconvenience of thinking beyond his own definitions of good-guys/bad-guys, and also doesn't like to be depressed. His pleasant, bumbling demeanor is preferable to the murderous efficiency of Kissinger and Kirkpatrick, but on the other hand, he is involved in the same dark and bloody deeds, all done under the same vast, all-encompassing and convenient banner of anticommunism. He feels that God is on his side, and that he really can do no wrong. What piques me is how this man and his followers can write off someone like my father. Because of my father's protestations about the raping of the Amazon forests, the pollution of our rivers, the misuse and depletion of natural energy, and the poisoning our children's air, people like my father are explained away with the flick of a wrist as a doomsayer, a depressive, a pessimistic liberal.”
James David Barber on Ronald Reagan
“Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy.”
Dave Barry on Ronald Reagan
“Older people, if they play their cards right, can get away with anything. The all-time examples of this is, of course, Ronald Reagan. Here's a man who was twice elected to the most powerful position on Earth despite needing a TelePrompTer to correctly identify what year it was. But no matter out-of-it he seemed to be, the people loved him. It was if we were in an airplane, and the pilot got sick, so our kindly old Uncle Bob had to take the controls. We didn't expect as much from President Uncle Bob. We considered it a major triumph if he didn't crash. Remember how he handled the Iran-contra Never-Ending Scandal from Hell? He went on national television, the President of the United States, and said it wasn't his fault, because he was not aware, at the time, of what his foreign policy was. In fact he had to appoint a Distinguished Commission to find out what his foreign policy was, and get back to him. Now if he'd been a young President, some little Mister Competence right-on-top-of-everything jogging fact-spouting pissant whippersnapper like Jimmy Carter, his own wife would have called for his impeachment. But with Ronald Reagan, the voters, who have also never had the vaguest idea what our foreign policy was, were very forgiving. "Yeah," they said, "How's he supposed to remember every darned time he authorizes the sale of weapons to enemy nations? Why don't you medias leave him alone?!" And Ron went right on grinning and being popular and pretty much limiting his executive actions to signing stuff and having polyps removed until the end of his wildly successful term in office.”
Larry Beinhart on Ronald Reagan 2 quotes
“Joe constantly points out that Trump started his campaign with racism, riding down the escalator, attacking Mexicans. Joe thinks this illustrates a difference. Ronald Reagan also started his presidential campaign with racism. He chose to make his kick-off speech in the heart of the Solid South, in Mississippi, quite near where three civil rights workers had been murdered. He said, "I believe in states' rights." It was the biggest dog whistle of the day, code for segregation, and the crowd cheered. He continued: "... we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." It had been the Republican Party that had tried to impose integration after the Civil War. Reagan was making it clear that his party was completely divorcing itself from Lincoln's vision. It was not a one-off. Reagan ran against the "welfare queens" and against "the strapping bucks" who stood in front of you at the supermarket, buying steaks with food stamps, while you made do with hamburger helper, earned by the honest sweat of your brow. It was a brilliant strategy that turned government programmes into handouts to minorities with money stolen - through taxes - from good white people. It was called the Southern Strategy. Reagan did not invent it. But he sold it with warmth, charm, and a smile.”
Jello Biafra on Ronald Reagan
“I am Emperor Ronald Reagan Born again with fascist cravings Still, you made me president Human rights will soon go 'way I am now your Shah today Now I command all of you Now you're going to pray in school I'll make sure they're Christian too ... You'll go quitely to boot camp They'll shoot you dead, make you a man Don't you worry, it's for a cause Feeding global corporations' claws Die on our brand new poison gas El Salvador or Afghanistan Making money for President Reagan And all the friends of President Reagan”
Jack Benny on Ronald Reagan
“Ronald Reagan has done a great job for California, although in all fairness to Pat Brown, when Pat was governor, we didn't have earthquakes.”
Max Boot on Ronald Reagan
“Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview. Reagan had his faults, like JFK, but he was optimistic and gentlemanly. He was pro-free trade and pro-immigration. He believed in limited government at home and American leadership abroad. That's what I believed in too — and that's what I thought the Republican Party stood for.”
David Broder on Ronald Reagan
“The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides.”
Archie Brown on Ronald Reagan
“Reykjavik did not sour the Reagan—Gorbachev relationship. Indeed Gorbachev trusted Reagan more from that time onwards, and the way he spoke about him was much more respectful after Reykjavik than before. Chernyaev cites an instance not long before the Reykjavik summit in which a prominent Western politician, in a meeting with Gorbachev, described Reagan as "fool and a clown", to which Gorbachev responded that it was pity that such a person should be at head of a superpower. After Reykjavik, Chernyaev never heard Gorbachev even in private express or agree with such sentiments concerning Reagan.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Ronald Reagan
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
• Variant: A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have.”
• Variant: A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have.”
“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
“George [H. W. Bush] brought his ne'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job.”
About Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 February 1911 – 5 June 2004) was an American politician and actor, who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975, following a career as a Hollywood actor and union leader. He was the husband of Jane Wyman (1940–1949) and Nancy Davis (married in 1952).