“The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose – somehow we win out.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. we did'nt pass it to our children in the bloodstream. it must be fought for, protected, and handed on to them to do the same; or, one day, we will spending our sunset years telling our children and our childrens children, what it was once like in the united states where men were free.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I was not a great communicator, but I communicated great things.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Looking back at the recent history of the world, I find it amazing how far civilization has retrogressed so quickly. As recently as World War I—granted the rules were violated at times—we had a set of rules of warfare in which armies didn’t make war against civilians: Soldiers fought soldiers. Then came World War II and Hitler’s philosophy of total war, which meant the bombing not only of soldiers but of factories that produced their rifles, and, if surrounding communities were also hit, that was to be accepted; then, as the war progressed, it became common for the combatants simply to attack civilians as part of military strategy. By the time the 1980s rolled around, we were placing our entire faith in a weapon whose fundamental target was the civilian population.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Morality in the long run aligned with strategy.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I think my political transformation began with my exposure to the business-as-usual attitude of many civil service bureaucrats during the war; then came the attempted Communist take-over of the picture business, which a lot of my liberal friends refused to admit ever happened; next, I had a brief experience living in a country that promised the kind of womb-to-tomb utopian benevolence a lot of these liberal friends wanted to bring to America. In 1949, I spent four months in England filming The Hasty Heart while the Labor Party was in power. I saw firsthand how the welfare state sapped incentive to work from many people in a wonderful and dynamic country.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The government is like a baby's
alimentary canal, with a happy
appetite at one end and no
responsibility at the other.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Perhaps you and I have lived with this miracle too long to be properly appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
