Top 1117 Quotes & Sayings by Ronald Reagan - Page 15

By 1980, we knew it was time to renew our faith, to strive with all our strength toward the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society. We believed then and now there are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams.

We desire peace. But peace is a goal, not a policy. Lasting peace is what we hope for at the end of our journey. It doesn't describe the steps we must take nor the paths we should follow to reach that goal.

Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? ... Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.

Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it ... the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.

Why should the government subsidize intellectual curiosity?

Let's face it.., our current [immigration control] system is like a busy intersection without a traffic cop: sure there are laws on the books, but absent enforcement, there are too many accidents.

It's just too bad we can't have an epidemic of botulism.

This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men.

Isn't it interesting that all of those people who support the choice of abortion have already been born?

It ought to be remembered by all [that] the Games more than 2,000 years ago started as a means of bringing peace between the Greek city-states. And in those days, even if a war was going on, they called off the war in order to hold the Games. I wish we were still as civilized.

Those concerns of a national character-such as air and water pollution that do not respect state boundaries, or the national transportation system, or efforts to safeguard your civil liberties-must, of course, be handled on the national level.

Die-hard conservatives thought that if I couldn't get everything I asked for, I should jump off the cliff with the flag flying-go down in flames. No, if I can get 70 or 80 percent of what it is I'm trying to get ... I'll take that and then continue to try to get the rest in the future.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow.

America's view of apartheid is simple and straightforward: We believe it is wrong. We condemn it. And we are united in hoping for the day when apartheid will be no more.

My fellow Americans, I must speak to you tonight about a mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States. This danger will not go away it will grow worse, much worse, if we fail to take action now.

You know, it was only a generation ago that actors couldn't be buried in the churchyard.

The victims of crime have been transformed into a group oppressively burdened by a system designed to protect them.

They don't worship at the altar of forced busing and mandatory quotas. They don't believe you can remedy past discrimination by mandating new discrimination. (Defending his nominees for Civil Rights Commission)

The United States trades more with the province of Ontario alone than with Japan.

You on the cutting edge of technology have already made yesterday's impossibilities the commonplace realities of today.

These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers.

I feel that the whole Western World will benefit by the resurrection of the neutron bomb project.

In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off.

When PLO sniper fire is followed by 14 hours of Israeli bombardment, that's stretching the definition of defensive action too far.

A university is a place where ancient tradition thrives alongside the most revolutionary ideas. Perhaps as no other institution, a university is simultaneously committed to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow.

My friends, we did it. We weren't just marking time, we made a difference. We made (America) stronger - we made (America) freer - and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad. Not bad at all. And so, goodbye. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: The Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business, and big labor.

Someone asked me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the President. And I had to say, "Yes, I am. I've felt it. I believe in intercessory prayer." But I couldn't help but say to that questioner after he'd asked the question that - or at least say to them that if sometimes when he was praying he got a busy signal, it was just me in there ahead of him.

America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station, and to do it within a decade.

As two proud and independent peoples, there is much that distinguishes us one from the other, but there is also much that we share: a vast continent, with its common hardships and uncommon duties; generations of mutual respect and support, and an abiding friendship that grows ever stronger.

We're more than friends and neighbors and allies; we are kin, who together have built the most productive relationship between any two countries in the world today.

Elena, my four year old, says to me in all seriousness; "Mommy, you need to buy another baby".

Jesse Helms wants me to move to the right, Lowell Weiker wants me to move to the left, and Teddy Kennedy wants me to move back to California.

I think we should keep the grain and export the farmers.

You can never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to wet their finger and hold it in the wind.

The [Carter] administration doesn't know the difference between a diplomat and a doormat.

Government is not the answer to the problem - it IS the problem.

Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating.

If we don't want to see the map of Central America covered in a sea of red, eventually lapping at our own borders, we must act now.

I just don't think it's good for us to be run out of town. (Refusing to cancel Secretary of State visit to Moscow)

I have come to the conclusion that the 22nd Amendment [limiting the presidency to two terms] was a mistake. Shouldn't the people have the right to vote for someone as many times as they want to vote for him?

The American taxing structure, the purpose of which was to serve the people, began instead to serve the insatiable appetite of government. If you will forgive me, you know someone has once likened government to a baby. It is an alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

I don't know why anyone would want to study the expansion of the universe.

Diplomacy, of course, is a subtle and nuanced craft, so much so that it's said that when the most wily diplomat of the nineteenth-century passed away, other diplomats asked, on reports of his death, "What do you suppose the old fox meant by that?

I warned that there should be no place on Earth where terrorists can rest and train and practice their deadly skills. I meant it. I said that we would act with others, if possible, and alone if necessary to ensure that terrorists have no sanctuary anywhere. Tonight, we have.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, 'The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.' We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

Wearing love beads and touting our sincerity will not make this a safer world.

Dreams became issues of East versus West. Hopes became political rhetoric. Progress became a search for power and domination. Somewhere the truth was lost that people don't make war, governments do.

If I thought there was some reason to be concerned about them, I wouldn't be sleeping in this house tonight. (When asked about continued presence of Soviet nuclear submarines along US coastlines)

Israel exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbors that they recognize those facts. I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival, ever since the founding of the State of Israel 34 years ago. In the pre-1967 borders Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.

The vote on the Peacekeeper is also a vote on Geneva. Rejecting the Peacekeeper will knock the legs out from under the negotiating table. (On importance of the MX missile)

I don't have too much time for fiction.

It is no coincidence that when the thugs tried to wrest control over Grenada, there were 30 Soviet advisors and hundreds of Cuban military and paramilitary forces on the island.

Someone told me it was a round thing that gobbles up money. I thought that was Tip O'Neill.

Please assure me that you are all Republicans.

The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor.

I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.

For too long, the victims of crime have been the forgotten persons of our criminal justice system.

Too often, people forget the basic fact of life: all those good things we enjoy come from the ache in [our] backs and the willingness to shoulder great personals risks.

I do not feel betrayed. ... He has a fine record. He is a national hero. (On Oliver L North's work)