“A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at? ”

“The first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy. If the people running the welfare program had let their clientele find other ways of making a living, that would have reduced their importance and their budget.”

“I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

“Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.”

“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of our world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.”

“When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.”

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

“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.”

“Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer.”

“On the streets of Moscow, looking into thousands of faces, I was reminded once again that it’s not people who make war, but governments—and people deserve governments that fight for peace in the nuclear age.”

“There is no humanity or charity in destroying self-reliance, dignity, and self-respect.”

“I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment’s would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”

“I’d learned a few lessons about negotiating: You’re unlikely to ever get all you want; you’ll probably get more of what you want if you don’t issue ultimatums and leave your adversary room to maneuver; you shouldn’t back your adversary into a corner, embarrass him, or humiliate him; and sometimes the easiest way to get some things done is for the top people to do them alone and in private.”

“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.”

“The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom and openmindedness. Question: Isn’t the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.”