“if there was any loose money lying around, the people in government would find a way to spend it. The worst sin in the bureaucracy was to give money back because it meant the bureaucracy’s budget could be reduced the following year. If at the end of the fiscal year they hadn’t spent all the money in their budget, there would be a rush to buy new office furniture, take a trip at the taxpayers’ expense, or spend the money on something else, just to assure their budget wouldn’t be smaller in the future. The idea of returning money to taxpayers once it had been collected from them had never come up before.”

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

“If you're explaining, you're losing.”

“The future doesn't belong to the light-hearted. It belongs to the brave.” 

“My parents constantly drummed into me the importance of judging people as individuals. There was no more grievous sin at our household than a racial slur or other evidence of religious or racial intolerance. A lot of it, I think, was because my dad had learned what discrimination was like firsthand. He’d grown up in an era when some stores still had signs at their door saying, NO DOGS OR IRISHMEN ALLOWED. When my brother and I were growing up, there were still ugly tumors of racial bigotry in much of America, including the corner of Illinois where we lived. At our one local movie theater, blacks and whites had to sit apart—the blacks in the balcony. My mother and father urged my brother and me to bring home our black playmates, to consider them equals, and to respect the religious views of our friends, whatever they were. My brother’s best friend was black, and when they went to the movies, Neil sat with him in the balcony. My mother always taught us: “Treat thy neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you,” and “Judge everyone by how they act, not what they are.” Once my father checked into a hotel during a shoe-selling trip and a clerk told him: “You’ll like it here, Mr. Reagan, we don’t permit a Jew in the place.” My father, who told us the story later, said he looked at the clerk angrily and picked up his suitcase and left. “I’m a Catholic,” he said. “If it’s come to the point where you won’t take Jews, then some day you won’t take me either.” Because it was the only hotel in town, he spent the night in his car during a winter blizzard and I think it may have led to his first heart attack.”

“Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.”

“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'.”

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.”

“These were eye-opening years for me. When I’d come back to Warner Brothers after the war, I’d shared the orthodox liberal view that Communists—if there really were any—were liberals who were temporarily off track, and whatever they were, they didn’t pose much of a threat to me or anyone. I heard whispers that Moscow wanted to infiltrate the world’s most powerful medium of entertainment, but I’d passed them off as irrational and emotional red baiting. Now I knew from firsthand experience how Communists used lies, deceit, violence, or any other tactic that suited them to advance the cause of Soviet expansionism. I knew from the experience of hand-to-hand combat that America faced no more insidious or evil threat than that of Communism.”

“Since I came to the White House, I've gotten two hearing aids, had a colon operation, a prostate operation, skin cancer, and I've been shot...damn thing is, I've never felt better.”

“We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.”

“I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

“I learned that hard work is an essential part of life—that by and large, you don’t get something for nothing—and that America was a place that offered unlimited opportunity to those who did work hard. I learned to admire risk takers and entrepreneurs, be they farmers or small merchants, who went to work and took risks to build something for themselves and their children, pushing at the boundaries of their lives to make them better. I have always wondered at this American marvel, the great energy of the human soul that drives people to better themselves and improve the fortunes of their families and communities. Indeed, I know of no greater force on earth.”

“Just think how happy you'd be if you lost everything you have right now & then got it back.”

“For years, I’ve heard the question: “How could an actor be president?” I’ve sometimes wondered how you could be president and not be an actor.”