“I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen. ”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Welfare was taking away the very thing that people needed most—the initiative to provide for themselves. At the same time it was undermining the family: Teenagers from the inner cities, who for various reasons decided they didn’t want to live at home anymore, discovered that by getting pregnant—they didn’t even have to wait for their baby to be born—they got a welfare check that allowed them to rent their own apartment, and they discovered they could increase their monthly welfare check any time they chose simply by getting pregnant again. Meanwhile, the father of the child might have a good job and want to live with his family. But he was told his family was better off financially if he walked out on them; if he stayed, they wouldn’t get a welfare check. Not only was the welfare program a tax-financed incentive for immorality that was destroying the family, it was responsible for an endless and malignant cycle of despair in which generation after generation went on the dole and never had any incentive to leave it.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The key for any speaker is to establish his own point of view for the audience, so they can see the game through his eyes.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Whatever his reasons, Gorbachev had the intelligence to admit Communism was not working, the courage to battle for change, and, ultimately, the wisdom to introduce the beginnings of democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise. As I said at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, the Soviet Union faced a choice: Either it made fundamental changes or it became obsolete. Gorbachev saw the handwriting on the Wall and opted for change.”
―
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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Just think how happy you'd be if you lost everything you have right now & then got it back.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“In a country ruled by laws, it seemed to me that nothing was more important than removing politics from the process of choosing judges. During previous administrations in California, governors had often handed out judgeships to friends and cronies like prizes at a company picnic. Not only had this produced a lot of inferior judges, it had placed a number of partisans on the bench who believed that putting on the black robes of a judge gave them a license to rewrite the laws. I wanted judges who would interpret the Constitution, not rewrite it.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Here’s my formula: I usually start with a joke or story to catch the audience’s attention; then I tell them what I am going to tell them, I tell them, and then I tell them what I just told them.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty”
―
Ronald Reagan
