“We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around.”
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Ronald Reagan
“I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
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Ronald Reagan
“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
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Ronald Reagan
“They preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth. They are the focus of evil in the modern world.... So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
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Ronald Reagan
“This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right. There is only an up or down: up to man’s age-old dream—the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. In this vote-harvesting time they use terms like the “Great Society,” or as we were told a few days ago by the president, we must accept a “greater government activity in the affairs of the people.”
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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
“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.”
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Ronald Reagan
“It seems to me that America is constantly reinventing what "America" means.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement. ”
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Ronald Reagan
“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem.”
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Ronald Reagan
“These young Americans sent a message to terrorists everywhere. . . . You can run but you can't hide.”
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Ronald Reagan
