Top 70 Nancy Reagan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A woman is like a tea bag. She only knows her strength when put in hot water.”

— Nancy Reagan

2. “Just say no to drugs!”

— Nancy Reagan

3. “There’s a big, wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It’s exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don’t cheat yourself out of this promise.”

— Nancy Reagan

4. “God has a plan for each of us and that while we might not understand His plan now, eventually we will.”

— Nancy Reagan

5. “I am a big believer that eventually everything comes back to you. You get back what you give out.”

— Nancy Reagan

6. “You just get up each day and put one foot in front of the other and go. You know, each day is different.”

— Nancy Reagan

7. “Presidents don’t get vacations – they just get a change of scenery. The job goes with you.”

— Nancy Reagan

8. “Drugs take away the dream from every child’s heart and replace it with a nightmare, and it’s time we in America stand up and replace those dreams.”

— Nancy Reagan

9. “I think more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.”

— Nancy Reagan

10. “As I’ve said before, time is short, and life is precious.”

— Nancy Reagan

11. “What can you say about a man, who on Mother’s Day sends flowers to his mother-in-law, with a note thanking her for making him the happiest man on Earth?”

— Nancy Reagan

12. “Every woman is entitled to an opinion and the right to express that opinion-especially to the man she’s married to.”

— Nancy Reagan

13. “You learn something out of everything, and you come to realize more than ever that we’re all here for a certain space of time, and, and then it’s going to be over, and you better make this count.”

— Nancy Reagan

14. “I always liked red. It’s a picker-upper.”

— Nancy Reagan

15. “They were very short, the golden years. The golden years are when you can sit back, hopefully, and exchange memories. And that’s the worst part about this disease. There’s nobody to exchange memories with.”

— Nancy Reagan

16. “My life really began when I married my husband.”

— Nancy Reagan

17. “People aren’t really poor until they start using water on their corn flakes.”

— Nancy Reagan

18. “I think a woman gets more if she acts feminine.”

— Nancy Reagan

19. “People should be afraid of the cancer, not the mammogram.”

— Nancy Reagan

20. “The movies were custard compared to politics...”

— Nancy Reagan

21. “Everything just fell into place with Ronnie and me. We completed each other.”

— Nancy Reagan

22. “Pornography is pornography, what is there to see? Movies are attempting to destroy something that’s supposed to be the most beautiful thing a man and a woman can have by making it cheap and common. It’s what you don’t see that’s attractive.”

— Nancy Reagan

23. “When people say, ‘You have Alzheimer’s,’ you have no idea what Alzheimer’s is. You know it’s not good. You know there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. That’s the only way you can go. But you really don’t know anything about it. And you don’t know what to expect.”

— Nancy Reagan

24. “I love you so very much I don’t even mind that life made me wait so long to find you. The waiting only made the finding sweeter.”

— Nancy Reagan

25. “I don’t think most people associate me with leeches or how to get them off. But I know how to get them off. I’m an expert at it.”

— Nancy Reagan

26. “I favor capital punishment. It saves lives.”

— Nancy Reagan

27. “To my young friends out there: Life can be great, but not when you can’t see it. So, open your eyes to life: to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to His children, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to make it count. Say yes to your life.”

— Nancy Reagan

28. “The White House belongs to all Americans. It’s supposed to be something we’re proud of.”

— Nancy Reagan

29. “I said from the very beginning, I don’t want a big house, I don’t want big grounds, I don’t want the trouble with the maintenance and all of that.”

— Nancy Reagan

30. “Feminism is the ability to choose what you want to do.”

— Nancy Reagan

31. “I don’t intend for this to take on a political tone. I’m just here for the drugs.”

— Nancy Reagan

32. “Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to alleviate so much suffering. Surely, by working together we can harness its life-giving potential.”

— Nancy Reagan

33. “What it boils down to is that each person has his own ways of coping with trauma and grief, with the pain of life, and astrology was one of mine. Don’t criticize me, I wanted to say, until you have stood in my place. This helped me. Nobody was hurt by it.”

— Nancy Reagan

34. “Remember, I’m a doctor’s daughter. So obviously I’m interested in all medical things.”

— Nancy Reagan

35. “My life didn’t really begin until I met Ronnie.”

— Nancy Reagan

36. “There is no job description for the first lady and she’s only there because her husband got elected president.”

— Nancy Reagan

37. “Why take chances? It may be nonsense, but does anybody really know? And people have certainly been fascinated by astrology for thousands of years.”

— Nancy Reagan

38. “It’s one of the best programs I’ve ever seen because it benefits both sides: children, who need love, and grandparents, elderly people, who need to feel wanted.”

— Nancy Reagan

39. “The Sixties, of course, was the worst time in the world to try and bring up a child. They were exposed to all these crazy things going on.”

— Nancy Reagan

40. “I have been criticized and ridiculed for turning to astrology, but after a while, I reached the point where I didn’t care.”

— Nancy Reagan

41. “It’s always written that my father was a rich, conservative John Bircher. That is untrue. He was not rich. He was not a John Bircher.”

— Nancy Reagan

42. “I thought Obama ran the best campaign I have ever known – disciplined, well organised, very, very good. I was very impressed.”

— Nancy Reagan

43. “For eight years, I was sleeping with the president, and if that doesn’t give you special access, I don’t know what does!”

— Nancy Reagan

44. “Countless people, suffering from many different diseases, stand to benefit from the answers stem cell research can provide. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to do everything in our power to find cures for these diseases – and soon. As I’ve said before, time is short, and life is precious.”

— Nancy Reagan

45. “I rarely think about myself that much. I really don’t.”

— Nancy Reagan

46. “It is true that when you’re in the White House alone, it is a lonely place. Big and lonely.”

— Nancy Reagan

47. “I’ve had quite a life, when you stop and think about it.”

— Nancy Reagan

48. “My job is being ‘Mrs. Ronald Reagan.’”

— Nancy Reagan

49. “I’m doing what I want to do.”

— Nancy Reagan

50. “It is well known that my husband and Lady Thatcher enjoyed a very special relationship as leaders of their respective countries during one of the most difficult and pivotal periods in modern history. Ronnie and Margaret were political soul mates, committed to freedom and resolved to end Communism.”

— Nancy Reagan