“Here’s how I see your weight—it is your smoke detector. And we’re all burning up the best part of our lives.”

“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.”

“If we are to depend on prayer during tough times, we should be people of prayer before the crisis hits.”

“Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.”

“Dios siempre tiene su manera de poner a su gente en la posición necesaria y en el momento preciso.”

“Promoting the general welfare does mean that the government should do things that enhance the lives of its citizens. The government should build and maintain infrastructure that supports population growth, business, and self-improvement endeavors. It should not, however, meddle in the affairs of all the citizens or control every aspect of their lives, as is done in many communist and socialist countries.”

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”

“Healing belongs to you. It belongs to you because sickness is of the enemy. It belongs to you because you are a spiritual child of Abraham. It belongs to you because sickness is a curse, and Christ has redeemed you from the curse of the law.”

“The only limitation is that which one sets up in one's own mind.”

“If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.”

“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. ”

“It has been said there was a cross in the heart of God long before the cross was erected at Calvary. As we think about it we will be overwhelmed at the wonder and greatness of His love for us.”

“[Young people,] dress as attractively as you can. You are an aristocrat, a child of God.”

“Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion –- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven."

“People reading the Bible for the first time are often surprised to discover how much human drama it contains. Almost every conceivable human dilemma and conflict is reflected in its pages.”