“If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.”

“Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them.”

“Mr. President: We, women political prisoners of the Soviet Union, congratulate you on your reelection to the spot of President of the USA. We look with hope to your country which is on the road of FREEDOM and respect for HUMAN RIGHTS. We wish you success on this road.”

“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.”

“There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.”

“Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.”

“When Carter finally agreed to a debate, the date was set for October 28, one week before the election, and we were delighted. The debate went well for me and may have turned on only four little words. They popped out of my mouth after Carter claimed that I had once opposed Medicare benefits for Social Security recipients. It wasn’t true and I said so: “There you go again . . .”

“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.”

“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?”

“I think my political transformation began with my exposure to the business-as-usual attitude of many civil service bureaucrats during the war; then came the attempted Communist take-over of the picture business, which a lot of my liberal friends refused to admit ever happened; next, I had a brief experience living in a country that promised the kind of womb-to-tomb utopian benevolence a lot of these liberal friends wanted to bring to America. In 1949, I spent four months in England filming The Hasty Heart while the Labor Party was in power. I saw firsthand how the welfare state sapped incentive to work from many people in a wonderful and dynamic country.”

“I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.”

“We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief. Nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate."

“The best minds are not in government.”

“Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.” 

“As government expands, liberty contracts.”