The last words and final moments of 40 presidents

Photo collage of close-ups of mouths of Robert F Kennedy, Dwight D Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and William Howard Taft.

'I'm trying to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris'

(Image credit: Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images)

last updated 24 June 2025

Former President Joe Biden's grim prostate cancer diagnosis means that it might not be long before he joins the list of chief executives who have passed on. American presidents have met their end in virtually every way known to human beings, some suddenly in hails of gunfire, some shortly after leaving office and some of old age years or even decades after their time as the country's leader. There is no official office that certifies the last words of presidents, and because much of what we know about the leaders of the early American Republic is secondhand or perhaps even altogether apocryphal, there is a considerable amount of guesswork involved in reconstructing the last moments of some of the most powerful men who have ever lived. And of course, not all of them were in any condition to offer last words. Some, like Ronald Reagan, were in the final throes of Alzheimer's, and others, like 100-year-old Jimmy Carter, were no longer able to communicate from their deathbeds.

Given the importance that even the least well-regarded presidents have had on U.S. and world history, there is value in interpreting their parting thoughts for future generations to ponder. For better or worse, these are the 40 men who have had the unique honor and responsibility of serving as president of the United States and who are no longer with us. Some had regrets, while others had none, and many expected another chapter on a different plane. As far as we can tell, none expected it to be hell, although perhaps several of them should have.

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We don't know the last words he spoke, but the last words he is known to have written were a get-well message to Harry Truman, who hit his head on the bathtub after slipping in his bathroom. In a telegram, Hoover wrote, "Bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents for as you may recall a bathtub rose up and fractured my vertebrae when I was in Venezuela on your world famine mission in 1946. My warmest sympathy and best wishes for your speedy recovery."

"At the last moment when his breathing told us this was it, he opened his eyes and looked straight at my mother. Eyes that hadn't opened for days, did. And they weren't chalky or vague. They were clear, and blue, and full of love. If a death can be lovely, his was. In his last moment, he taught me that there is nothing stronger than love between two people, two souls... It was the last thing he could do in this world to show my mother how entwined their souls are... and it was everything."