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.
1Abraham Lincoln
The Gettysburg Address runs 272 words and is still the shortest famous speech in the language.
2Theodore Roosevelt
Gave the language "speak softly and carry a big stick" and the whole "man in the arena" passage.
3Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" opened his first inaugural in the worst month of the Depression.
4Ronald Reagan
A former actor's timing, from "tear down this wall" to the joke about not exploiting his opponent's youth.
5Thomas Jefferson
Wrote the sentence about self-evident truths that every later American argument quotes back.
6Harry S. Truman
Plain-spoken to the point of bluntness — "the buck stops here" sat on his desk.
7Calvin Coolidge
Famous for saying almost nothing, which made the little he did say quotable by contrast.
8Dwight D. Eisenhower
His farewell warning about the "military-industrial complex" outlived every policy of his presidency.
9Barack Obama
Built two campaigns on cadence, from the 2004 convention speech onward.
10Woodrow Wilson
A former professor whose Fourteen Points set the vocabulary of twentieth-century diplomacy.
11Andrew Jackson
Blunt to the edge of threat, and quoted for it ever since.
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