# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published August 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/who-is-the-most-quotable-us-president*

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## Current results (0 votes)

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

Tags: historical-figures, usa, presidents