Who is the most quotable U.S. president?

Speechwriters did a lot of this work, but the lines that stuck tend to be the ones the man said himself.

1. 1
   Abraham Lincoln

   The Gettysburg Address runs 272 words and is still the shortest famous speech in the language.
2. 2
   Theodore Roosevelt

   Gave the language "speak softly and carry a big stick" and the whole "man in the arena" passage.
3. 3
   Franklin D. Roosevelt

   "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" opened his first inaugural in the worst month of the Depression.
4. 4
   Ronald Reagan

   A former actor's timing, from "tear down this wall" to the joke about not exploiting his opponent's youth.
5. 5
   Thomas Jefferson

   Wrote the sentence about self-evident truths that every later American argument quotes back.
6. 6
   Harry S. Truman

   Plain-spoken to the point of bluntness — "the buck stops here" sat on his desk.
7. 7
   Calvin Coolidge

   Famous for saying almost nothing, which made the little he did say quotable by contrast.
8. 8
   Dwight D. Eisenhower

   His farewell warning about the "military-industrial complex" outlived every policy of his presidency.
9. 9
   Barack Obama

   Built two campaigns on cadence, from the 2004 convention speech onward.
10. 10
    Woodrow Wilson

    A former professor whose Fourteen Points set the vocabulary of twentieth-century diplomacy.
11. 11
    Andrew Jackson

    Blunt to the edge of threat, and quoted for it ever since.

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