We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one!
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Justice
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
—Ronald Reagan
Let us ask ourselves; “What kind of people do we think we are?”
—Ronald Reagan
Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things.
—Ronald Reagan
If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.
—Ronald Reagan
In my eighty years, I prefer to call that the forty-first anniversary of my thirty ninth birthday, I’ve seen what men can do for each other and do to each other, I’ve seen war and peace, feast and famine, depression and prosperity, sickness and health. I’ve seen the depth of suffering and the peaks of triumph and I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and that there is purpose and worth to each and every life.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Humanity
A leader, once convinced that a particular course of action is the right one, must be undaunted when the going gets tough.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Endurance, Perseverance, Determination
Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.
—Ronald Reagan
So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: War
Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Freedom
The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave.
—Ronald Reagan
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Government
While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Americans, Past, The Past, Inspiration
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. If nothing is worth dying for, when did this begin..? …Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots of Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world?
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Revolution
Poverty is a career for lot’s of well paid people
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Poverty
We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look.
—Ronald Reagan
As government expands, liberty contracts
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Government, One liners
I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964
—Ronald Reagan
Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Since I came to the White House, I got two hearing aids, a colon operation, skin cancer, a prostate operation, and I was shot. The damn thing is I’ve never felt better in my life.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Cancer
We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Economy, Economics
Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Drugs
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Government, Appetite, Babies, Responsibility
You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jelly beans.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Character
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Security
True, lasting peace cannot be secured through
the strength of arms alone. Among free peoples,
the open exchange of ideas ultimately is our greatest security.
—Ronald Reagan
Someplace along the line the audience discovered you. In my case it was playing the Gipper.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Actors, Acting
I’m not smart enough to lie.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Lies
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Status quo, you know, that is Latin for the mess we’re in.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Change
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.
—Ronald Reagan
Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Morality, Morals
Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Welfare, Government
Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Economics, Jobs
If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Experience
Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.
—Ronald Reagan
Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.
—Ronald Reagan
Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Work, Unemployment
Entrepreneurs are the forgotten heroes of America.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Leadership
Millions of individuals making their own decisions
in the marketplace will always allocate resources
better than any centralized government planning process.
—Ronald Reagan
Topics: Self-Knowledge, Government
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Lyndon B. Johnson American Head of State
George H. W. Bush American Head of State
Richard Nixon American Head of State
Dwight D. Eisenhower American Head of State
John F. Kennedy American Head of State
William McKinley American Head of State
Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State
Fred Astaire American Dancer, Singer