“As smart as he was, though, I suspect even FDR didn’t realize that once you created a bureaucracy, it took on a life of its own. It was almost impossible to close down a bureaucracy once it had been created.”

“IRISH BLESSING   And may I conclude with a little Irish blessing – although, some suggest it’s a curse: May those who love us, love us. And those who don’t love us, may God turn their hearts. And if He doesn’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping. Speech on Administrative Goals to Senior Presidential Appointees, September 8, 1987”

“Jefferson repeatedly said that the best government was the smallest government, that “governments are not the masters of the people, but the servants of the people governed.”

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”

“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”

“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.”

“I discovered that night (in his college's student politics) that an audience has a feel to it, and, in the parlance of the theater, that audience and I were together.”

“We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around.”

“I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other.”

“The taxpayer: That’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.” 

“We do not deny any nation's legitimate interest in security. But protecting the security of one nation by robbing another of its national independence and national traditions is not legitimate. In the long run, it is not even secure.”

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