“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
“I couldn t help but say to Mr. Gorbachev just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. We d find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Your co-orbital anti-satellite weapon is designed to destroy satellites. Furthermore, the Soviet Union began research in defenses utilizing directed energy before the United States did and seems well along in research (and incidentally, some testing outside laboratories) of lasers and other forms of directed energy. I do not point this out in reproach or suggest these activities are in violation of agreements, but if we were to follow your logic to the effect that what you call space-strike weapons would only be developed by a country planning a first strike, what would we think?”
―
Ronald Reagan
“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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“There probably isn’t any undertaking on earth short of assuring the national security that can’t be handled more efficiently by the forces of private enterprise than by the federal government.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Morality in the long run aligned with strategy.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The press is dying to paint me as now trying to undo the New Deal. I remind them I voted for F.D.R. 4 times. I’m trying to undo the “Great Society.” It was L.B.J.’s war on poverty that led to our present mess.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Together, let us make this a new beginning. Let us make a commitment to care for the needy, to teach our children the values and the virtues handed down to us by our families, to have the courage to defend those values and the willingness to sacrifice for them. Accepting Republican nomination, Detroit, July 17, 1980”
―
Ronald Reagan
“No matter what your background, no matter how low your station in life, there must be no limit on your ability to reach for the stars, to go as far as your God-given talents will take you. Trust the people; believe every human being is capable of greatness, capable of self-government . . . only when people are free to worship, create, and build, only when they are given a personal stake in deciding their destiny and benefiting from their own risks, only then do societies become dynamic, prosperous, progressive, and free.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be -- through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“A rebuke to Cong. “How could it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing & talk by the hour.”
―
Ronald Reagan
