“Many countries of the world, I said, had constitutions, but in almost every case they were documents in which governments told their people what they could do. The United States had a constitution, I said, that was different from all the others because in it the people tell their government what it can do. Its three most important words are “We the people,” its most important principle, freedom.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“It is up to us in our time to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The miracle of life is given by One greater than ourselves, but once given, each life is ours to nurture and preserve, to foster, not only for today's world but for a better one to come. There is no purpose more noble than for us to sustain and celebrate life in a turbulent world, and that is what we must do now. We have no higher duty, no greater cause as humans. Life and the preservation of freedom to live it in dignity is what we are on this Earth to do. Everything we work to achieve must seek that end so that some day our prime ministers, our premiers, our presidents, and our general secretaries will talk not of war and peace, but only of peace.”
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Ronald Reagan
“One legislator accused me of having a 19th-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an 18th-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government’s primary concerns.”
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Ronald Reagan
“No matter what your background, no matter how low your station in life, there must be no limit on your ability to reach for the stars, to go as far as your God-given talents will take you. Trust the people; believe every human being is capable of greatness, capable of self-government . . . only when people are free to worship, create, and build, only when they are given a personal stake in deciding their destiny and benefiting from their own risks, only then do societies become dynamic, prosperous, progressive, and free.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I have flown twice over Mt St. Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“There is no humanity or charity in destroying self-reliance, dignity, and self-respect.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Preparing for the future must begin, as always, with our children. We need to set for them new and more rigorous goals.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“If the Soviet Union and its allies were allowed to continue subverting democracy with terrorism and fomenting so-called “wars of national liberation” in Central America, it wouldn’t stop there: It would spread into the continent of South America and north to Mexico. Then, as I was told that Lenin once said: “Once we have Latin America, we won’t have to take the United States, the last bastion of capitalism, because it will fall into our outstretched hands like overripe fruit. . .”
―
Ronald Reagan
“We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones; often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they’ll tell you it’s all that they learned in their struggles along the way; yes, it’s what they learned from failing.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.”
―
Ronald Reagan
