Quotes from Ronald Reagan

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose – somehow we win out.

For more than five years, I'd made little progress with my efforts at quiet diplomacy—for one thing, the Soviet leaders kept dying on me.

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

If freedom, democracy, and the rights of man are to be preserved through the ages, free men and women must accept the responsibilities that go with their freedoms.

Tax increases don't eliminate deficits they increase govt. spending.

If we're free to dare – and we are – if we're free to give – and we are – then we're free to shape the future and have within our grasp all that we dream the future will be.

One legislator accused me of having a 19th-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an 18th-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government's primary concerns.

I have no recollection of that ever happening.

Great things can be accomplished, when it doesnt matter who gets the credit.

It is up to us in our time to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.

I don't think we'll solve the problem of the deficit until three things happen: We need more discipline on spending in Congress. We need a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget. And we need to give our presidents a line-item veto.

But our strategy for peace with freedom must also be based on strength—economic strength and military strength.

Radio was theater of the mind.

I'd learned a few lessons about negotiating: You're unlikely to ever get all you want; you'll probably get more of what you want if you don't issue ultimatums and leave your adversary room to maneuver; you shouldn't back your adversary into a corner, embarrass him, or humiliate him; and sometimes the easiest way to get some things done is for the top people to do them alone and in private.

The key for any speaker is to establish his own point of view for the audience, so they can see the game through his eyes.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty

Met with Jim Watt. He's taking a lot of abuse from environmental extremists but he's absolutely right. People are ecology too and they cant forage for food and live in caves.

I think growing up in a small town is a good foundation for anyone who decides to enter politics. You get to know people as individuals, not as blocs or members of special interest groups.

Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward, the Communist world.

America will never be whole as long as the right to life granted by our Creator is denied to the unborn.

You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

Doing for people what they can, and ought to do for themselves, is a dangerous experiment," the great labor leader Samuel Gompers said. "In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends on their own initiative." The classic "liberal" believed individuals should be masters of their own destiny and the least government is the best government; these are precepts of freedom and self-reliance that are at the root of the American way and the American spirit.