Ronald Reagan Quotes

[The Soviets] 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.

I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens out on our West Coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about.

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

If there's one observation that rings true in today's changing world, it is that freedom and peace go hand in hand.

Stick to your dreams and determine that you're going to make them come true.

Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.

Most of my dreams came true.

Cars don't cause pollution, trees do.

Conservatives were brought up to hate deficits and justifiably so. We've long thought there are two things in Washington that are unbalanced - the budget and the liberals.

Permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana.

I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.

We're the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

I have decided that whatever time I may have left is left for Him.

I hope Americans will read and study the Bible in the coming year. It's my firm belief that the enduring values, as I say, presented in its pages have a great meaning for each of us and for our nation.

Freedom-loving people around the world must say . . . I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism.

Excellence does not begin in Washington.

Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide.

Sixty percent of our immigrants are admitted merely because they have relatives here. Many of these people are not immediate relative, but are part of extended families. The nepotistic U.S. policy lets in relatives then lets in the relatives' relatives, and so on, creating an endless and ever growing chain of new immigrants.

Our tax policy is engineered by people who view tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure.

Families cannot prosper and keep America strong if government becomes a Goliath that preys upon their wealth, usurps their rights, and crushes their spirit.

Whether meeting with leaders and parents concerned about drugs in Bonn, Lisbon, or with the Holy Father at the Vatican, or doing a pretty fair flamenco in Madrid, I think Nancy's one of the best ambassadors America's ever had.

The neutron warhead is a defensive weapon designed to offset the great superiority that the Soviet Union has on the western front against the NATO nations.

There was a time when "sound as a dollar" was a description, not a joke.

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick - professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, "We the people," this breed called Americans.

Through you, we feel as giants, once again.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work - work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get there. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

Do what's right and you'll please some of the people and astound the rest.

The WPA was one of the most productive elements of FDR's alphabet soup of agencies because it put people to work building roads, bridges, and other projects... It gave men and women a chance to make some money along with the satisfaction of knowing they earned it.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down.

The family has always been the cornerstone of American society.

If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.

The American people aren't overtaxed. The government in Washington is overfed. The main difference between ourselves and the other side is: we see an America where every day is the Fourth of July. They see an America where every day is April 15.

Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics. This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped.

There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.

God, the source of all knowledge, should never have been expelled from our children's classrooms.

Has anyone stopped to consider that we might come closer to balancing the budget if all of us simply tried to live up to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule?

America needs jobs and opportunity, not make-work and handouts.

Please tell me you're Republicans.

How can we not believe in the greatness of America? How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last best hope of man on Earth? After all our struggles to restore America, to revive confidence in our country, hope for our future - after all our hard-won victories earned through the patience and courage of every citizen - we cannot, must not, and will not turn. We will finish our job. How could we do less? We're Americans.

Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it ... the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.

You know, if Nancy Davis hadn't come along when she did, I would have lost my soul.

May every day be a new beginning, and every dawn bring us closer to that shining city upon a hill.

Without God, democracy cannot and will not long endure.

Through the history of our nation, Americans have always extended their hands in gestures of assistance.