“Met with Jim Watt. He’s taking a lot of abuse from environmental extremists but he’s absolutely right. People are ecology too and they cant forage for food and live in caves.”

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

“Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.” 

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

“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.”

“We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won”

“There can be no freedom without order, and there is no order without virtue. Now, that’s a simple enough formulation, but it’s an insight found not only in the writings of Founding Fathers like Washington or great political thinkers like Edmund Burke; it is also found in a great part of our Judeo-Christian tradition.”

“Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.”

“I was raised to believe that God has a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan. My mother—a small woman with auburn hair and a sense of optimism that ran as deep as the cosmos—told me that everything in life happened for a purpose. She said all things were part of God’s Plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best. If something went wrong, she said, you didn’t let it get you down: You stepped away from it, stepped over it, and moved on. Later on, she added, something good will happen and you’ll find yourself thinking—“If I hadn’t had that problem back then, then this better thing that did happen wouldn’t have happened to me.”

“Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way”

“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.”

“Harry Truman once said: “Find me a one-armed economist, because every one I know always says, ‘Well, on the other hand . . .”

“The best minds are not in government.”

“They had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." on Challenger disaster”

“Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement. ”