“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive”
―
Ronald Reagan
“But our strategy for peace with freedom must also be based on strength—economic strength and military strength.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“They don't subscribe to our sense of morality; they don't believe in an afterlife; they don't believe in a God or religion. And the only morality they recognize, therefore, is what will advance the cause or socialism.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Democracy triumphed in the cold war because it was a battle of values—between one system that gave preeminence to the state and another that gave preeminence to the individual and freedom. Not long ago, I was told about an incident that illustrated this difference: An American scholar, on his way to the airport before a flight to the Soviet Union, got into a conversation with his cab driver, a young man who said that he was still getting his education. The scholar asked, “When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?” The young man answered, “I haven’t decided yet.” After the scholar arrived at the airport in Moscow, his cab driver was also a young man who happened to mention he was still getting his education, and the scholar, who spoke Russian, asked, “When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?” The young man answered: “They haven’t told me yet.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Trust me” government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs — in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The vast majority of students at the university only wanted an education. But for months they were robbed of it by the rampaging of a minority; meanwhile, many moderate voices on the faculty were silenced by the intimidation of left-wing professors whose vision of freedom of speech was limited to speech about things they agreed with.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at? ”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
―
Ronald Reagan
