Famous Quotes from ...

Ronald Reagan

  • Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • The very key to our success has been our ability, foremost among nations, to preserve our lasting values by making change work for us rather than against us.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Many Americans today, just as they did 200 years ago, feel burdened, stifled, and sometimes even oppressed by government that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, too wasteful, too unresponsive, too uncaring about people and their problems. I believe we can embark on a new age of reform in this country and an era of national renewal, an era that will reorder the relationship between citizen and government, that will make government again responsive to people, that will revitalize the values of family, work, and neighborhood and that will restore our private and independent social institutions.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • The one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period [is] contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look. (January 20, 1981)... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. (October 27, 1964)... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Why is it inflationary if the people keep their own money, and spend it the way they want to, [but] not inflationary if the government takes it and spends it the way it wants to?... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • The more government takes in taxes, the less incentive people have to work. What coal miner or assembly-line worker jumps at the offer of overtime when he knows Uncle Sam is going to take 60 percent or more of his extra pay?... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Government has laid its hand on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an ever-increasing degree interferes with the people's right to know. Government tends to grow, government programs take on weight and momentum as public servants say, always with the best of intentions. But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or economically as the private sector of the economy.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • We think there is a parallel between the Federal involvement in education and the decline in quality over recent years.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Most of my dreams came true. (told to biographer Lou Cannon in 1991)... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. (Farewell Address to the Nation, January 20th, 1989)... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • [He had retired from the Senate, one of the best-liked and respected men in the country, and was practicing law and preparing to run for the Republican nomination for president in 1988. A call came asking him to come to the White House. He was walking toward the Oval Office when he saw the president, Ronald Reagan , standing alone in the darkened hallway.] Howard, ... I need you ...... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • It is time to realize we are too great a nation for small dreams. We're not -- as some would have us believe -- doomed to an inevitable fate.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.... Ronald Reagan {view}
  • Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.... Ronald Reagan {view}