Ronald Reagan
Well I've said it before and I'll say it again America's best days are yet to come. Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious achievements are just ahead.Collection: America
If a tax hike makes it to my desk, I'll veto it in less time than it takes Vanna White to turn the letters V-E-T-O!Collection: White
If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer.Collection: Answers
You will be competing against athletes from many nations. But, most important, you are competing against yourself. All we expect is for you to do your very best, to push yourself just one second faster, one notch higher, one inch further.Collection: Athlete
Whether meeting with leaders and parents concerned about drugs in Bonn, Lisbon, or with the Holy Father at the Vatican, or doing a pretty fair flamenco in Madrid, I think Nancy's one of the best ambassadors America's ever had.Collection: Father
I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference. It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.Collection: Differences
Our goals are the same as those of the U.N.'s founders, who sought to replace a world at war with one where the rule of law would prevail, where human rights were honored, where development would blossom, where conflict would give way to freedom from violence.Collection: War
Over hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. There was wide distribution of land and they didn't confiscate anyone's privately owned land... We need an industrial Homestead Act.Collection: Wisdom
Could there be a better answer to the stupidity of Karl Marx than millions of workers individually sharing in the ownership of the means of production.Collection: Wisdom
I've long believed one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or corporation.Collection: Wisdom
Meanwhile, what about the workers in those state monopolies that are being put up for sale? I am reminded of a technique for employee ownership that has worked well for many U.S. companies. It goes by various names, but the best known is "Employee Stock Ownership Program," or ESOP.Collection: Wisdom
Our economic assistance must be carefully targeted, and must make maximum use of the energy and efforts of the private sector... Economic freedom is the world's mightiest engine for abundance and social justice... Developing countries need to be encouraged to experiment with a growing variety of arrangements for profit sharing and expanded capital ownership.Collection: Country
A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?Collection: War
We must remove government's smothering hand from where it does harm; we must seek to revitalize the proper functions of government. We do these things to set loose again the energy and the ingenuity of the American people. We do these things to reinvigorate those social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the individual and the state - and which remain the real source of our progress as a people.Collection: Real
As we celebrate Thanksgiving, we should reflect on the full meaning of this day as we enjoy the fellowship that is so much a part of the holiday festivities. Searching our hearts, we should ask what we can do as individuals to demonstrate our gratitude to God for all He has done. Such reflection can only add to the significance of this precious day of remembrance.Collection: Gratitude
Freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few, but the universal right of all God's children.Collection: Children
I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blastCollection: Funny
When those who are governed do too little, those who govern can - and often will - do too much.Collection: Government
We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey.Collection: Mean
[Our goal] is to help revive America's traditional values: faith, family, neighborhood, work and freedom. Government has no business enforcing these values but neither must it seek, as it did in the recent past, to suppress or replace them. That only robbed us of our tiller and set us adrift. Helping to restore these values will bring new strength, direction and dignity to our lives and to the life of our nation. It's on these values that we'll best build our future.Collection: Past
f you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals - if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.Collection: Believe
. . . I hope that when you're my age, you'll be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom, we lived lives that were a statement, not an apology.Collection: Freedom
Anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things-we're never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.Collection: Goal
Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.Collection: Mistake
God, the source of our knowledge, has been expelled from the classroom. He gives us His greatest blessing, life, and yet many would condone the taking of innocent life. We expect Him to protect us in a crisis, but turn away from Him too often in our day-to-day living. I wonder if He isn't waiting for us to wake up.Collection: God
I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.Collection: Russian Language
When liberals say 'family', they mean 'Big Brother in Washington.' When we say 'family,' we mean 'honor thy father and mother.'Collection: Mother
There were so many candidates on the platform that there were not enough promises to go around.Collection: Government
Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.Collection: Government
Everyone is a liberal until they have something to conserve. Then they become a conservative.Collection: Conservative
Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.Collection: Memorial Day
I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future.Collection: Past
Yes, deficits are a problem. I've been saying so for more than a quarter of a century now. But the problem is not the size of the deficit, it's the size of government's claim on our economy.Collection: Government
Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.Collection: Government
Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.Collection: Children
The people of Central America - and, in a broader sense, the entire developing world - need to know first-hand that freedom and opportunity are not just for the elite, but the birthright of every citizen; that property is not just something enjoyed by a few, but can be owned by any individual who works hard and makes correct decisions.Collection: Hard Work
Elena, my four year old, says to me in all seriousness; "Mommy, you need to buy another baby".Collection: Funny
This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men.Collection: Spiritual
Too often, people forget the basic fact of life: all those good things we enjoy come from the ache in [our] backs and the willingness to shoulder great personals risks.Collection: People
Why should the government subsidize intellectual curiosity?Collection: Government
Jesse Helms wants me to move to the right, Lowell Weiker wants me to move to the left, and Teddy Kennedy wants me to move back to California.Collection: Moving
You can never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to wet their finger and hold it in the wind.Collection: Wind
Wearing love beads and touting our sincerity will not make this a safer world.Collection: Love Is
It's just too bad we can't have an epidemic of botulism.Collection: Epidemics
It is no coincidence that when the thugs tried to wrest control over Grenada, there were 30 Soviet advisors and hundreds of Cuban military and paramilitary forces on the island.Collection: Military
It ought to be remembered by all [that] the Games more than 2,000 years ago started as a means of bringing peace between the Greek city-states. And in those days, even if a war was going on, they called off the war in order to hold the Games. I wish we were still as civilized.Collection: Peace
When PLO sniper fire is followed by 14 hours of Israeli bombardment, that's stretching the definition of defensive action too far.Collection: Peace
America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station, and to do it within a decade.Collection: Dream
Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it ... the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.Collection: Holocaust