Ronald Reagan
Anyone who seeks success or greatness should first forget about both and seek only the truth. The rest will follow.Collection: Greatness
Two Soviets . . . were talking to each other. And one of them asked, "What's the difference between the Soviet Constitution and the United States Constitution?" And the other one said, "That's easy. The Soviet Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of gathering. The American Constitution guarantees freedom after speech and freedom after gathering."Collection: Freedom
I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.Collection: Independent
If we get the federal government out of the classroom, maybe we'll get God back in.Collection: Military
Abraham Lincoln freed the black man. In many ways, Dr. King freed the white man. How did he accomplish this tremendous feat? Where others - white and black - preached hatred, he taught the principles of love and nonviolence.Collection: Kings
It's been written that the most sublime figure in American history was George Washington on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge. He personified a people who knew that it was not enough to depend on their own courage and goodness, that they must also seek help from God - their Father and preserver. Where did we begin to lose sight of that noble beginning, of our conviction that standards of right and wrong do exist and must be lived up to? Do we really think that we can have it both ways, that God will protect us in a time of crisis even as we turn away from him in our day-to-day life?Collection: God
[A woman waiting for him in the Kremlin asked Gobachev] "Was communism invented by a politician or a scientist?" [He replied] "Well, a politician." She said, "That explains it. The scientist would have tried it on mice first."Collection: Science
Government Steals from the needy and gives to the greedyCollection: Government
Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to follow your dream, or stick to your conscience even if you're the only one in a sea of doubters.Collection: Dream
I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. And I can remember one bleak night in the thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he'd lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that's a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.Collection: Jobs
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!Collection: Men
Outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or economically as the private sector.Collection: Government
Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.Collection: Unions
Going around this country, I have found a great hunger in America for spiritual revival; for a belief that law must be based on a higher law; for a return to traditions and values that we once had. Our government, in its most sacred documents - the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and all - speak of man being created, of a Creator; that we're a nation under God.Collection: Spiritual
The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people from religion; that amendment was written to protect religion from government tyranny. . . But now we're told our children have no right to pray in school. Nonsense. The pendulum has swung too far toward intolerance against genuine religious freedom. It is time to redress the balance.Collection: Religious
When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, their isn't a word to describe them. This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world. It is also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, stillbirths, birth defects, SIDS, and other causes.Collection: Children
There is a fundamental difference between separation of church and state and denying the spiritual heritage of this country. Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. are Jefferson's words, 'The God Who gave us life gave us liberty -- can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?'Collection: Country
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.Collection: Government
This is not to say that the government should confiscate from the "haves" and bestow upon the "have-nots", beyond the requirements of a compassionate welfare program to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. Far from it. But it is to say that our duty is to foster a strong, vibrant wealth-producing economy which operates in such a way that new additions to wealth accrue to those who presently have little or no ownership stake in their country.Collection: Country
The current tax code is a daily mugging.Collection: Political
Freedom-loving people around the world must say . . . I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism.Collection: People
I was going to have an opening statement, but I decided that what I was going to say I wanted to get a lot of attention, so I'm going to wait and leak it.Collection: Waiting
Admittedly, there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face.Collection: Lying
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars: It is better to be here [in Europe] ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.Collection: War
Let us remember with devotion that the flag we love and honor is the flag of freedom that flew in victory at Yorktown, the flag the United States Marines raised on Mount Suribachi, the flag Francis Scott Key saw by the dawn's early light. Long may it wave.Collection: Marine
I am told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day; for that I am deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each inaugural day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.Collection: Prayer
History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness.Collection: Funny
You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly.Collection: Mistake
Professional politicians like to talk about the value of experience in government. Nuts! The only experience you gain in politics is how to be political.Collection: Government
Our policy is simple: We are not going to betray our friends, reward the enemies of freedom, or permit fear and retreat to become American policies — especially in this hemisphere. None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong.Collection: Leadership
We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth.Collection: Government
The things that unite us-America's past of which we are so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much loved country-these things far outweigh what little divides us.Collection: Country
Congressional mistakes have dramatically increased immigration through a series of what I believe were ill-advised actions going back to 1965 when the basic notions of our immigration laws were revised. In 1990, Congress opened the floodgates by passing a 35-percent increase in legal immigration.Collection: Mistake
I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.Collection: War
Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will.Collection: Peace
Even now I wonder what I might have accomplished if I'd studied harderCollection: Politics
The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.Collection: California
What does an actor know about politics?Collection: Doe
I hope the people on Wall Street will pay attention to the people on Main Street. If they do, they will see there is a rising tide of confidence in the future of America.Collection: Wall
The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees.Collection: Agency
Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon.Collection: Funny
Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything.Collection: Funny
We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life -- the unborn -- without diminishing the value of all human life . . . there is no cause more important.Collection: Important
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.Collection: Men
The task that has fallen to us as Americans is to move the conscience of the world, to keep alive the hope and dream of freedom. For if we fail or falter, there'll be no place for the world's oppressed to flee to. This is not a role we sought. We preach no manifest destiny. But like the Americans who brought a new nation into the world 200 years ago, history has asked much of us in our time. Much we've already given; much more we must be prepared to give.Collection: Dream
A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back.Collection: Long
We may be the generation that sees Armageddon.Collection: Scary
Yet optimism is in order, because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not-at-all-fragile flower. From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none - not one regime - has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.Collection: Flower
Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression. Poland's struggle to be Poland and to secure the basic rights we often take for granted, demonstrates why we dare not take those rights for granted.Collection: Struggle