“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.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Harry Truman once said: “Find me a one-armed economist, because every one I know always says, ‘Well, on the other hand . . .”
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Ronald Reagan
“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.”
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Ronald Reagan
“No government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size—and that, in a way, became my theme.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.”
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Ronald Reagan
“It is up to us in our time to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.”
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Ronald Reagan
“If there's one observation that rings true in today's changing world, it is that freedom and peace go hand in hand.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Remember that every government service, every offer of government - financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom... In the days to come, whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service.”
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Ronald Reagan
“If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”
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Ronald Reagan
“My assignment as the post’s adjutant and personnel officer (I ended the war a captain) put me in close contact with the civilian bureaucrats and it didn’t take long for me to decide I didn’t think much of the inefficiency, empire building, and business-as-usual attitude that existed in wartime under the civil service system. If I suggested that an employee might be expendable, his supervisor would look at me as if I were crazy. He didn’t want to reduce the size of his department; his salary was based to a large extent on the number of people he supervised. He wanted to increase it, not decrease it. I discovered it was almost impossible to remove an incompetent or lazy worker and that one of the most popular methods supervisors used in dealing with an incompetent was to transfer him or her out of his department to a higher-paying job in another department. We had a warehouse filled with cabinets containing old records that had no use or historic value. They were totally obsolete. Well, with a war on, there was a need for the warehouse and the filing cabinets, so a request was sent up through channels requesting permission to destroy the obsolete papers. Back came a reply—permission granted provided copies are made of each paper destroyed.”
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Ronald Reagan
“I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.”
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Ronald Reagan
“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.”
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Ronald Reagan
