Whatever you thought of his politics, Ronald Reagan was a great man, a courageous man. He took an assassin's bullet and joked to the doctors as they desperately worked to save his life.

Ronald Reagan felt very great regret about the deficits to which he contributed on his watch.

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

I don't think anybody is - no one could compare to Ronald Reagan, because he was the right man at the right time.

Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on 'Laugh In' in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it.

No politician was more maligned than Ronald Reagan.