Top 1117 Quotes & Sayings by Ronald Reagan - Page 2

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

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

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy.

Let us ask ourselves, 'What kind of people do we think we are?' And let us answer, 'Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.'

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

I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.

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.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

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

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

Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world.

Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.

The British people know that, given strong leadership, time, and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

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

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy - the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities - which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

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

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

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

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

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.

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

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

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

The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts.

One picture is worth 1,000 denials.

One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.

We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

Poland is not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.

If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

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

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

We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: 'This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.' Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we're in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we've got to do something about the unemployed.

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.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

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

I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

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

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

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.

It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

Mad or glad, Mr. Reagan is head over heels in love with Mrs. Reagan and can't even imagine a world without her - He loves her.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.