Quotes from Ronald Reagan

There probably isn't any undertaking on earth short of assuring the national security that can't be handled more efficiently by the forces of private enterprise than by the federal government.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.

The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.

No government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size—and that, in a way, became my theme.

The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief. Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.

BY THE EARLY 1960S, GE was receiving more speaking invitations for me from around the country than I could handle. And, although I was still saying the same things that I'd said for six years during the Eisenhower administration, I was suddenly being called a "right-wing extremist.

A little less detente with the Politbureau and more encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of armored divisions.

The vast majority of students at the university only wanted an education. But for months they were robbed of it by the rampaging of a minority; meanwhile, many moderate voices on the faculty were silenced by the intimidation of left-wing professors whose vision of freedom of speech was limited to speech about things they agreed with.

The Democrats in the legislature agreed with us that welfare costs were headed for the stratosphere but claimed the solution was a huge tax increase—in other words, to keep pouring more money into a bucket that was full of holes.

As I have often said, governments don't produce economic growth, people do.

James Madison said in 1788: "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

If I could be elected president, I wanted to do what I could to bring about a spiritual revival in America.

Mr. President: We, women political prisoners of the Soviet Union, congratulate you on your reelection to the spot of President of the USA. We look with hope to your country which is on the road of FREEDOM and respect for HUMAN RIGHTS. We wish you success on this road.

Here's my formula: I usually start with a joke or story to catch the audience's attention; then I tell them what I am going to tell them, I tell them, and then I tell them what I just told them.

It is true that I opposed quotas in employment, education, and other areas. I consider quotas, whether they favor blacks or whites, men or women, to be a new form of discrimination as bad as the old ones.

Harry Truman once said: "Find me a one-armed economist, because every one I know always says, 'Well, on the other hand . . .

I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin

If suddenly there was a threat to this world form some other species from another planet, we'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our two countries and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings on this earth.

If [the people of the world] are incapable, as some would have us believe, of self-government, then where among them do we find any who are capable of governing others?

One thing was unusual and very humbling; the streets were lined with people as if for a parade all the way to the Waldorf. They cheered & clapped and I wore my arms out waving back to them. I keep thinking this can't continue and yet their warmth & affection seems so genuine I get a lump in my throat. I pray constantly that I won't let them down.

Deficits, as I've often said, aren't caused by too little taxing, they are caused by too much spending. Presidents don't create deficits, Congress does. Presidents can't appropriate a dollar of taxpayers' money; only congressmen can—and Congress is susceptible to all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with good government.

America was founded by people who believe that God was their rock of safety.

IF I'D GOTTEN THE JOB I WANTED at Montgomery Ward, I suppose I would never have left Illinois. I've often wondered at how lives are shaped by what seem like small and inconsequential events, how an apparently random turn in the road can lead you a long way from where you intended to go—and a long way from wherever you expected to go.