Ron Reagan Quotations

You cannot be against embryonic stem cell research and be intellectually and therefore morally consistent, if you're not also against in vitro fertilization.

We have three cats. It's like having children, but there is no tuition involved.

I couldn't join a party that, frankly, tolerates members who are bigots for one thing, homophobes, racists.

I admire the fact that the central core of Buddhist teaching involves mindfulness and loving kindness and compassion.

My wife and I just prefer Seattle. It's a beautiful city. Great setting. You open your front door in the morning and the air smells like pine and the sea, as opposed to bus exhaust.

My father was not a bully. I almost never heard him raise his voice to anybody.

Stem cell research can revolutionize medicine, more than anything since antibiotics.

I have to say that flying on Air Force One sort of spoils you for coach on a regular airline.

Now, ignorance is one thing, ignorance can be cured. But many of the Republican leaders opposing this research know better.

What do you say to your sister who poses in the nude? It's not like you are really itching to see photographs of your sister naked. I mean, it's just something that is not too exciting.

We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.

I mean, we've had all these awful pictures from the prison in Iraq and these sort of memos floating around about justifying torture, all this kind of stuff. And it makes you want to take a shower, you know?

My father didn't know George W. Bush from Adam.

My father never felt the need to wrap himself in anybody's mantle. He never felt the need to pretend to be anybody else. This is their administration. This is their war. If they can't stand on their own two feet, well, they're no Ronald Reagans, that's for sure.

You look at women at the Republican convention and women at the Democratic convention. Republicans have a certain aesthetic beauty that involves more makeup, bigger hair, more lurid outfits.

My father felt that children should make their own way.

When you hear somebody justifying a war by citing the Almighty, I get a little worried, frankly.

I could share an hour of warm camaraderie with Dad, then once I'd walked out the door, get the uncanny feeling I'd disappeared into the wings of his mind's stage, like a character no longer necessary to the ongoing story line.

John McCain knows as well as anyone that Sarah Palin has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office. I'm sorry, it's got nothing to do with the fact that she wears skirts - she's grossly unqualified.

I've been to Reagan National Airport. I tell people it was named after me.

Neither of my parents would ever stand in the way of any of their children speaking their minds.

I'm aware that most people who meet me for the first time think of me in a certain way because of who my father is. That just comes with the territory. But that's been that way ever since I was a little kid as long as I can remember. I grew up that way.

He had written my mother once that he wanted her to be the first thing he saw every morning and the last thing he ever saw. And that's how it turned out.

My father was a public figure all my life, and so the presidency was an extension of that. I guess you get used to it, though you can stand back occasionally and think, 'Boy, this is really weird!'

Maureen was, let's see, nearly 20 years older than me. So, you know, we didn't kind of grow up together so much but we got along fine.

My father was a man-that's the difference between him and Bush.

One thing that Buddhism teaches you is that every moment is an opportunity to change.

He is home now. He is free. History will record his worth as a leader. We here have long since measured his worth as a man -- honest, compassionate, graceful, brave. He was the most plainly decent man you could ever hope to meet.

We can gather without posting notice. Of course, we are always open if members of the public want to join us.

I think this makes more sense. We're moving in the right direction.

We have very few working farms left, ... I'm one of about six or seven dairy farms left where there used to be that many where I live. Farming as an element, economically, it's not there anymore.

We didn't change a whole lot, ... We updated some stats and made some changes we think will happen in the next 10 to 15 years.

The outstanding thing about my father to me anyway was just what a good and decent person he was. He was good and decent to everybody.

This isn't a whim of hers. She knows this is right, flat out. There is no down side to this, ... This is the right thing to do.

There was something about that public turnout that I think made it easier for everybody,

It's not my money. Any chance we have an opportunity to give it back, we should.

Every once in a while someone will make the mistake ... of invoking my father in some way that they have really no right to do. ... I'll tolerate it up to a point, but after a point it's like, I'm going to shut this down right now.

Swimming was a big deal for us. It was sort of a bonding thing for my dad and I.

I'm not really cut out to be a politician. You know that I sometimes don't know when to shut up. That could be a drawback. I'm an atheist. So there you go right there. I can't be elected to anything because polls all say that people won't elect an atheist... As we all know, that is something people won't accept.

I'm OK with my own emotions, but other people's emotions just put me on the floor.

Cheney brought my mother up to the casket, so she could pay her respects. She is in her 80's, and she has glaucoma and has trouble seeing. There were steps, and he left her there. He just stood there, letting her flounder. I don't think he's a mindful human being. That's probably the nicest way I can put it.

Now, ignorance is one thing, ignorance can be cured. But many of the Republican leaders opposing this research know better.

People who believe they are acting with the mandate of God, who see others who don't share their beliefs as inferior in the eyes of God, make dangerous leaders. Just ask Osama Bin Laden.

If you are going to call yourself a Christian-and I don't-then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight-it has put them in greater danger.

I would be unelectable. I'm an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won't accept.

The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he's in now (Alzheimer's Syndrome). Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's - these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people.

He never stopped wanting to save the world.

Religion may indeed inspire acts of great kindness and courage. But it also trains people to believe things for which there is no evidence. This makes religion's intrusion into the political sphere all the more troubling.

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man... , But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians - wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.

The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job. What's his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?

You know, people get frustrated because their loved ones who have Alzheimer's, oh, he doesn't recognize me anymore, how can I recognize this person, if they don't recognize me? They're not the same person. Well, they are the same person, but they've got a brain disease. And it's not their fault they've got this disease.

I've never joined any political party and have no plans to do so. I'm fully independent.

It's just that I have this funny objection to torturing small animals no matter how scrumptious their body parts might be. ... Our food industries are equal opportunity abusers: cows, chickens, pigs, and a special mention to those little calves who for their short, miserable lives are locked into crates too small to allow movement just so we can eat veal.