Quotes from Ronald Reagan

These young Americans sent a message to terrorists everywhere. . . . You can run but you can't hide.

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Freedom is not free

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known.

Facts are stupid things.

Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.

If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.

Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.

I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future.

I heard one presidential candidate say that what this country needed was a president for the nineties. I was set to run again. I thought he said a president IN his nineties.

The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom and openmindedness. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.

Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.

I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with. Well, we've discovered that money alone isn't the answer.

We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around.

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.

America is, and always will be, a shining city on a hill.