“For more than five years, I’d made little progress with my efforts at quiet diplomacy—for one thing, the Soviet leaders kept dying on me.”
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Ronald Reagan
“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.”
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Ronald Reagan
“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order --or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.”
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Ronald Reagan
“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”
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Ronald Reagan
“They had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." on Challenger disaster”
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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.”
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Ronald Reagan
“An America that is militarily and economically strong is not enough. The world must see an America that is morally strong with a creed and a vision. This is what has led us to dare and achieve. For us, values count. Speech, New York City, December 12, 1983”
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Ronald Reagan
“At my first press conference I was asked whether we could trust the Soviet Union, and I said that the answer to that question could be found in the writings of Soviet leaders: It had always been their philosophy that it was moral to lie or cheat for the purpose of advancing Communism.”
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Ronald Reagan
“I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.”
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Ronald Reagan
“I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.”
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Ronald Reagan
“No people in all history paid a higher price for freedom. And no people have done so much to advance the dignity of man. We are called materialistic. May be so…but our materialism has made our children the biggest, tallest, most handsome, and intelligent generations of Americans yet. They will live longer with fewer illnesses, learn more, see more of the world, and have more success in realizing their personal dreams and ambitions than any other people in any other period of our history - because of our materialism…I think on our side of civilization and on the other side is the law of the jungle…We all have to recognize that this country has been handed the responsibility, greater than any nation, to preserve some 6000 years of civilization against the barbarians.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.”
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Ronald Reagan
“I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.”
―
Ronald Reagan
