“If you're explaining, you're losing.”

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

“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.”

“On the streets of Moscow, looking into thousands of faces, I was reminded once again that it’s not people who make war, but governments—and people deserve governments that fight for peace in the nuclear age.”

“An America that is militarily and economically strong is not enough. The world must see an America that is morally strong with a creed and a vision. This is what has led us to dare and achieve. For us, values count. Speech, New York City, December 12, 1983”

“History is made by men and women of vision and courage. Tonight freedom is on the march.”

“Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive”

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

“I thanked Nancy for what she had accomplished in her war against illegal drugs, but in my heart, I was really trying to say, “Thank you, Nancy, for everything; thank you for lighting up my life for almost forty years.”

“Preparing for the future must begin, as always, with our children. We need to set for them new and more rigorous goals.”

“I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.”

“I heard one presidential candidate say that what this country needed was a president for the nineties. I was set to run again. I thought he said a president IN his nineties.”

“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.”

“America is, and always will be, a shining city on a hill.” 

“If politics were a musical, it would be "Promises, Promises"