“I don't believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”

“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”

“Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer.”

“The glass is not half empty; it is half full.”

“The best minds are not in government.”

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”

“Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive”

“Your co-orbital anti-satellite weapon is designed to destroy satellites. Furthermore, the Soviet Union began research in defenses utilizing directed energy before the United States did and seems well along in research (and incidentally, some testing outside laboratories) of lasers and other forms of directed energy. I do not point this out in reproach or suggest these activities are in violation of agreements, but if we were to follow your logic to the effect that what you call space-strike weapons would only be developed by a country planning a first strike, what would we think?”

“We are a Nation Under God. If we ever forget this, we are a nation gone UNDER"

“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.”

Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.”

“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.”

“Trees, how many of 'em do we need to look at?

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God. ”