Top 1117 Quotes & Sayings by Ronald Reagan - Page 14

I also believe this blessed land was set apart in a very special way, a country created by men and women who came here not in search of gold, but in search of God. They would be free people, living under the law with faith in their Maker and their future. Sometimes, it seems we've strayed from that noble beginning, from our conviction that standards of right and wrong do exist and must be lived up to.

We intend to keep the peace - we will also keep our freedom.

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

Coersion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.

When I've heard all I need to make a decision, I don't take a vote. I make a decision.

The fourth landing of the Columbia is the historical equivalent of the driving of the golden spike which completed the first transcontinental railroad. It marks our entrance into a new era.

We have not inherited an easy world. If developments like the Industrial revolution, which began in England, and the gifts of science and technology have made life much easier for us, they have also made it more dangerous. There are threats now to our freedom, indeed to our very existence, that other generations could never even have imagined. There is first the threat of global war. No president, no Congress, no prime minister, no parliament can spend a day entirely free of this threat. If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

I've been told that some members of Congress disagree with my tax cut proposal. Well, you know it's been said that taxation is the art of plucking feathers without killing the bird. It's time they realized the bird just doesn't have any feathers left.

These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland. The values that have inspired other dissidents under communist domination. They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.

This is not the time for political fun and games. This is the time for a new beginning. I ask you now to put aside any feelings of frustration or helplessness about our political institutions and join me in this dramatic but responsible plan to reduce the enormous burden of Federal taxation on you and your family.

We have seen numerous instances in which American businesses have brought in foreign skilled workers after having laid off skilled American workers, simply because they can get the foreign workers more cheaply. It has become a major means of circumventing the costs of paying skilled American workers or the costs of training them.

Wouldn't it be better for the human spirit and for the soul of this nation to encourage people to accept more responsibility to care for each other rather than leaving those tasks to paid bureaucrats.

[Write to your congressional representative against the health care reform proposal or] we will awake to find that we have socialism.

Margaret Thatcher - this great lady has not only served her country well, she has served the free world well.

George Burns . . . the only man I know who does fool Mother Nature.

America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.

The people's instincts are still right. You see them come to the rescue of someone-a child who falls down a well-hundreds of people rush to help, and labor and equipment are volunteered without any thought of who's going to pay for it. This is a basic feeling in Americans. They don't stand back in such a circumstance and ask what the government's going to do about it.

I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security.

If our planes were shot down, yes, they's wake me right away. If the other fellows' were shot down, why wake me up?

Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control---all of which led us to this state in the first place... We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.

The true lesson of the Vietnam War is: certainty of purpose and ruthlessness of execution win wars.

We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.

In Israel, free men and women are every day demonstrating the power of courage and faith. Back in 1948 when Isreal was founded, pundits claimed the new country could never survive. Today, no one questions that. Israel is a land of stability and democracy in a region of tyranny and unrest.

The despicable North Korean attack in Rangoon deprived us of trusted advisers and friends. So many of those who died had won admirers in America as they studied with us or guided us with their counsel. I personally recall the wisdom and composure of Foreign Minister Lee, with whom I met in Washington just a few short months ago. To the families and countrymen of all those who were lost, America expresses its deep sorrow.

Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent.

This administration is totally colorblind.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom...

For the people of Israel and America are historic partners in the global quest for human dignity and freedom. We will always remain at each other's side.

ALEC has forged a unique partnership between state legislators and leaders from the corporate and business community. This partnership offers businessmen the extraordinary opportunity to apply their talents to solve America's problems and build on our opportunities.

We were poor when I was young but the difference was that the government didn't come around telling you you were poor.

I think, too, that we've got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees-you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at? Opposing expansion of Redwood National Park.

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.

I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as 'the masses.'

Someday, the realm of liberty and justice will encompass the planet. Freedom is not just the birthright of the few, it is the God-given right of all His children, in every country. It won't come by conquest. It will come, because freedom is right and freedom works. It will come, because cooperation and good will among free people will carry the day.

You know economists; they're the sort of people who see something works in practice and wonder if it would work in theory.

To many of us now, computers, silicon chips, data processing, cybernetics, and all the other innovations of the dawning high technology age are as mystifying as the workings of the combustion engine must have been when that first Model T rattled down Main Street, U.S.A. But as surely as America's pioneer spirit made us the industrial giant of the 20th century, the same pioneer spirit today is opening up on another vast front of opportunity, the frontier of high technology.

Directly down the lawn and accross the Ellipse from the White House are those ordered, classic lines of the Jefferson Memorial and the eyes of the 19-foot statue that gaze directly into the White House, a reminder to any of us who might occupy that mansion of the quality of mind and generosity of heart that once abided there and has been so rarely seen there again.

Today, we're taking a break from the concerns and the bustle of the work-a-day world. But we're also making a new beginning. As we gather around our dining room tables for the midday meal, let us thank God for life and the blessings He's put before us. High among them are our families, our freedom, and the opportunities of a new year.

Constructive trade, the two-way exchange of goods and services, is the most efficient and logical way for each nation . . . to build a stable prosperity, a prosperity based not on aid, but on mutually beneficial economic contacts.

There is a flickering spark in us all which, if struck at just the right age...can light the rest of our lives, elevating our ideals, deepening our tolerance, and sharpening our appetite for knowledge about the rest of the world. Educational and cultural exchanges...provide a perfect opportunity for this precious spark to grow, making us more sensitive and wiser international citizens through our careers.

Although I held public office for a total of sixteen years, I also thought of myself as a citizen-politician, not a career one. Every now and then when I was in government, I would remind my associates that "When we start thinking of government as 'us' instead of 'them,' we've been here too long." By that I mean that elected officeholders need to retain a certain skepticism about the perfectibility of government.

Elvis epitomised America, and for that we shall be eternally grateful. There will never be anyone else like him. Let's all rejoice in his music.

I know Teddy Kennedy had fun at the Democratic convention when he said that I said that trees and vegetation caused 80 percent of the air pollution in this country. ... Well, now he was a little wrong about what I said. I didn't say 80 percent. I said 92 percent-93 percent, pardon me. And I didn't say air pollution, I said oxides of nitrogen. Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen. ... If we are totally successful and can eliminate all the manmade oxides of nitrogen, we'll still have 93 percent as much as we have in the air today.

A strong American economy is essential to the well-being and security of our friends and allies.

By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights the right to belong to a free trade union.

I'll be like Scarlett O'Hara-I'll think about it tomorrow.

Trees cause pollution.

We are for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity.

Where others fear trade and economic growth, we see opportunities for creating new wealth and undreamed-of opportunities for millions in our own land and beyond. Where others seek to throw up barriers, we seek to bring them down; where others take counsel of their fears, we follow our hopes.

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

Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.

Well, I would - if they realized that we - again if - if we led them back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.

I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full-bloom from my brow - they came from the heart of a great nation.

It should be clear to everyone that the nation's steadfast policy should afford every American of working age a realistic opportunity to acquire the ownership and control of some meaningful form of property in a growing national economy.

The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization. The West will not contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.

So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.

While other [military] alliances have been formed to win wars, our fundamental purpose is to prevent war while preserving and extending the frontiers of freedom.

To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. This is our purpose in the world, nothing more and nothing less.

Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.

My philosophy and my belief was that there was a long way for us to go in improving what we had ever known before, that this country of ours was a country of constant improvement. And so I thought that, well, what my whole approach was based on the promise of a better America.