The Age of Reagan Quotes

“One of the quips Reagan scribbled on a notepad after waking up after surgery was Winston Churchill’s famous line from his autobiography My Early Life that “there is no more exhilarating feeling than being shot at without result.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Reagan liked to quip about détente: “Détente—isn’t that what a farmer has with his turkey—until Thanksgiving Day?”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“The friction began at this first meeting. O’Neill was not initially impressed with Reagan and said to him, “You’ve been a governor of a state, but a governor plays in the minor leagues. You’re in the big leagues now.” (O’Neill had said the same thing to Jimmy Carter four years before.) Reagan replied, “Oh, you know, no problem there.” Despite the genial response, O’Neill’s comment represented the very kind of Washington haughtiness that set Reagan’s teeth on edge. Aides to the president-elect were incensed.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“George Will’s equally serviceable formula was “He does not want to return to the past; he wants to return to the past’s way of facing the future.” Reagan’s variety of future-oriented optimism rooted in historical attachment has become almost unrecognizable in the age of a postmodernism that is openly contemptuous of history and historical experience.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“week before the election, the New Republic’s Morton Kondracke wrote that “it seems more likely by the day that Ronald Reagan is not going to execute a massive electoral sweep. In fact, the movement of the presidential campaign suggests a Carter victory.”14 David Broder had written: “There is no evidence of a dramatic upsurge in Republican strength or a massive turnover in Congress.” Though polls in the days leading up to the election showed Reagan ahead of Carter, most were near or within the margin of error, and everyone was predicting a late-night nail-biter. The New York Times poll three days out had Reagan ahead by a single point; veteran California pollster Mervin Field said, “At the moment there is a slight movement toward Carter.” George Gallup said, “This election could very well be a cliffhanger just like 1948.”15”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Reagan passed out prepublication copies of Mandate to his incoming cabinet secretaries and senior staff in December. Mandate for Leadership became a rare think tank product on the bestseller list in the Washington, D.C., area.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Well boys, your troubles are over now; mine have just begun.” I think I know what he meant. Lincoln may have been concerned in the troubled times in which he became President, but I don’t think he was afraid. He was ready to confront the problems and the troubles of a still-youthful country, determined to seize the historic opportunity to change things. I am not frightened by what lies ahead. And I don’t believe the American people are frightened by what lies ahead. Together, together we’re going to do what has to be done. I aim to try and tap that great American spirit that opened up this completely undeveloped continent from coast to coast and made it a great nation, survived several wars, survived a great Depression, and we’ll survive the problems that we face right now.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, keeper of the “Doomsday Clock,” which purported to judge the risk of nuclear annihilation, moved the hands on the clock from seven to four minutes before midnight.10”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Reagan had predicted since the early 1960s that a “prairie fire” of conservative populism would someday sweep the nation; on November 4 it appeared that Reagan had finally struck the match.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“It is only as Reagan became the oldest living ex-president and new testimonials from his doctors came to light about his extraordinary fitness that we have begun to perceive that Reagan was as physically unique as he was mentally unique. Reagan”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“We’re for limited government,” he said in his 1988 State of the Union speech, “because we understand, as the Founding Fathers did, that it is the best way of ensuring personal liberty and empowering the individual so that every American of every race and region shares fully in the flowering of American prosperity and freedom.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“The important point to grasp is that Reagan approached politics from the standpoint of a citizen rather than as an aspiring politician or intellectual.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“a few liberals understood that the size and nature of Reagan’s landslide clearly indicated significant problems for the Democratic Party. Pat Moynihan said: “I’ll tell you what chills the blood of liberals. It was always thought that the old bastards were the conservatives. Now the young people are becoming the conservatives and we’re the old bastards.”66”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Democrats would back larger domestic spending cuts if Reagan would cut in half the third year of the income tax cut. “You can get me to crap a pineapple,” Reagan replied, “but you can’t get me to crap a cactus.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Even George Will deserted Reagan, writing in 1982 that the nation was “undertaxed.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Only one Republican voted against Reagan’s tax cut—Vermont’s Jim Jeffords,”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Casey was most famous for his supposed lack of diction; his “mumbling” became so legendary in Washington that Reagan quipped that Casey was the only CIA director in history who didn’t need to use a scrambler phone. On some minutes of National Security Council meetings, Casey’s indecipherable comments were recorded as “??????.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Kirkpatrick’s appointment was said to be unpopular with some Reagan insiders such as the Kitchen Cabinet, who held against her that she was a Democrat and therefore not a Reagan loyalist.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Reagan called Allen two hours later when he was changing planes in Chicago, asking, “Who is he?” “Who is who?” Allen replied. “Who is this Jeane Kirkpatrick?” “Well, first, he’s a she.”71”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Soviet woman of child-bearing age had six to eight abortions. This translated into 10 million to 16 million abortions per year. (The comparable figures for the United States were 0.5 abortions per woman and roughly 1.5 million abortions per year.)”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“By 1981, the seventy-four-year-old Brezhnev, hobbled by a series of strokes and barely able to function, could be seen drooling on himself on his rare appearances on Soviet television. Rather than removing him, however, the Politburo merely nominated him for still more medals. Lenin—the “incandescent” Lenin, as Churchill called him—would have been appalled.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Reagan, to his credit, was never much impressed with Establishment credentials. When told that his prospective secretary of transportation, Drew Lewis, was a Harvard Business School graduate, Reagan quipped, “So much for his liabilities.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“The Federal Communications Commission was preparing to grant the necessary authority to begin cellular telephone service, even though the technology had been around for more than twenty years. The first popular handheld cell phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, would appear in 1983; the size of a brick, the DynaTAC cost $3,995, and its battery charge lasted only thirty minutes.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“When asked if he knew about Pac-Man, Reagan quipped: “Someone told me it was a round thing that gobbles up money. I thought it was Tip O’Neill.”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989

“Fidel Castro’s opinion about Reagan offered right before the election: “We sometimes have the feeling that we are living in the time preceding the election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.” Libya’s Kaddafi was not to be left out of the parade, saying, “Reagan is Hitler number 2!” (This is admittedly confusing, since most radical Arab leaders like Hitler.)”
― Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989