President Reagan Quotes

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

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

I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.

If I could go, I would tell the truth to the North American people. President Reagan personally ordered my visa to be denied.

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.

Global political conditions make a direct American intervention difficult, but President Reagan's messianic and visceral attitude toward the Nicaraguan revolution could mean it will happen as an act of desperation.

President Reagan told us from the beginning that he believed in a kind of Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest ... [that] we should settle for taking care of the strong, and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.

As president, Reagan worked very well with Democrats to do big things. It is true that he worked to reduce the size of government and cut federal taxes and he eliminated many regulations, but he also raised taxes when necessary.

When I was operating as one of President Reagan's economic advisers, an early assignment was to analyze the federal government's landholdings and make recommendations about what to do with them. This was a big job. These lands are vast, covering an area six times that of France.

President Reagan doesn't retain very much of what comes his way on a given day.

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

Before you can exploit, you explore.... When President Reagan signed the paper defining our Undersea Exclusionary Zone, we doubled the size of the United States land. But unlike the Louisiana Purchase where we had a Lewis & Clark Expedition to survey the new land, we don't know what we have.

Having worked for him in the nuclear weapons policy business, I can tell you that President Reagan was committed to assuring the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent.

We got two examples in recent history from this country. One in the '80s under President Reagan. One under President Clinton and the Democratic-controlled Congress in the '90s. We had nearly 5 percent growth rate in each of those decades. We can do it again for sure.

President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people.

Always the eternal optimist, President Reagan instilled confidence and optimism at a time both were in short supply in our country.

It is absolutely right that President Reagan considers SDI and thank goodness people considered nuclear research before the last war.

People in my hometown voted for President Reagan - for many, like my grandpa, he was their first Republican - because he promised that tax cuts would bring higher wages and new jobs. It seemed he was right, so we voted for the next Republican promising tax cuts and job creation, George W. Bush. He wasn't right.

President Reagan preached 'trickle down economics' but naively did not reckon on the fact that the wealthy would only care about getting more for themselves instead of caring about helping those with less.

In the first weeks of the Obama administration, 'bipartisanship' was the reigning buzzword, and when the Beltway thinks 'bipartisan,' it pictures President Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill putting aside their differences and forging a legislative partnership, a ruddy pair of genial patriarchs bonding over the Blarney Stone.

Our borders have got to be secured. You know, when President Reagan, who was one of my idols, granted amnesty to about three million illegal immigrants, it was based on the fact that the borders would be secured. That didn't happen. It didn't happen during the Bush administration.

We all obviously need others to look up to, and be inspirational to us. Ford did a great job as far as putting the presidency back where it belonged, getting the trust back after Nixon. And President Reagan has been one of the most influential presidents.

President Reagan, expanding on President Lincoln's phrase, referred to America as 'the last, best hope of man on Earth.' But this last, best hope is beginning to fade.

President Reagan didn't always know what he knew.

The stories have been told so often by those of us who supported President Reagan over the years that they seem mundane, almost like a fictional novel or a movie script.