Ronald Reagan Quotes

As government expands, liberty contracts.

I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

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.

You can tell alot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.

We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.

It's not that liberals aren't smart, it's just that so much of what they know isn't so

If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.

I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.

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.

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Some spend their entire lives wondering if they have made a difference in this world. The Marines don't have that problem.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.

The future doesn't belong to the light-hearted. It belongs to the brave.

Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.

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

America is too great for small dreams.

When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

Life is one grand sweet song so start the music

A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.

Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.

Since I came to the White House, I got two hearing aids, a colon operation, skin cancer, a prostate operation, and I was shot. The damn thing is, I've never felt better in my life.

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

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

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

Facts are stubborn things.

One picture is worth 1,000 denials.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

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.

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

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

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

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

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

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

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.

People do not make wars; governments do.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

How can a president not be an actor?

What would this country be without this great land of ours.

A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.

We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years.

Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.

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

We seek a constitutional amendment to permit voluntary school prayer. God should never have been expelled from America's classrooms in the first place.

All systems are capitalist. It's just a matter of who owns and controls the capital — ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations.

The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

We believe faith and freedom must be our guiding stars, for they show us truth, they make us brave, give us hope, and leave us wiser than we were.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.

I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast

Anyone that's ever had their kitchen done over knows that it never never gets done as soon as you wish it would.

Money can't buy happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories.

The neutron warhead is a defensive weapon designed to offset the great superiority that the Soviet Union has on the western front against the NATO nations.

We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.

Every new day begins with possibilities. It's up to us to fill it with the things that move us toward progress and peace.

Excellence does not begin in Washington.

The war in vietnam threatened to tear our society apart, and the political and philosophical disagreements that separated each side continue, to some extent. It's been said that these memorials reflect a hunger for healing.

There were so many candidates on the platform that there were not enough promises to go around.

God's miracles are to be found in nature itself; the wind and waves, the wood that becomes a tree - all of these are explained biologically, but behind them is the hand of God.

I believe Moses was 80 when God first commissioned him for public service.

I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In opening our hearts, we hope this might promote greater awareness of this condition. Perhaps it will encourage a clearer understanding of the individuals and families who are affected by it.

It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

Poverty is a career for lot's of well paid people

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere

We're the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.

With our eyes fixed on the future, but recognizing the realities of today, we will achieve our destiny to be as a shining city on a hill for all mankind to see.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

We're in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country.

I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

My belief has always been... that wherever in this land any individual's constitutional rights are being unjustly denied, it is the obligation of the federal government-at point of bayonet if necessary-to restore that individual's constitutional rights

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.