Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
Here is a collection of Ronald Reagan most famous quotes: Ronald Reagan Quotes about Leadership, Freedom, Character, Accomplishment, Bravery, Modesty and Work. Funny Ronald Reagan Quotes. Reagan Famous Quotes Cold War. Quotes and Sayings on Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Government, Politics, Personal Freedom, Patriotism, Achievement and Laziness by Ronald Reagan.
Inspirational Ronald Reagan Quotes and Sayings
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.
We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.
I've often said there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.
You can tell alot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
The future doesn't belong to the light-hearted. It belongs to the brave.
Man is not free unless government is limited.
If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be one nation gone under.
Socialists ignore the side of man that is the spirit. They can provide you shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you're ill, all the things guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don't understand that we also dream.
I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.
Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.
When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.
Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.
As government expands, liberty contracts.
America is too great for small dreams.
It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?
There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.
The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.
There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.
I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.
The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.
Latinos are Republican. They just don't know it yet.
Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God.
Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon.
Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.
Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.
To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will.
One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.
How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it.
Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.
Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook.
Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.
Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.
We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'.
No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.
The British people know that, given strong leadership, time, and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil.
A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.
Don't be afraid to see what you see.
Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.
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.
Mad or glad, Mr. Reagan is head over heels in love with Mrs. Reagan and can't even imagine a world without her - He loves her.
We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.
You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we're in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we've got to do something about the unemployed.
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.
No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.
Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.
Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy.
I've heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance?
Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them.
Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.
Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer.
It's difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn't available.
If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.
Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, The Marines don't have that problem.
You can't tax business. Business doesn't pay taxes. It collects taxes.
If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.
Life is one grand sweet song so start the music.
You are Mrs. Reagan because Mr. Reagan loves you with all his heart.
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.
A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.
I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: 'This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.' Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way.
Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world.
It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.
Someday, the realm of liberty and justice will encompass the planet. Freedom is not just the birthright of the few, it is the God-given right of all His children, in every country. It won't come by conquest. It will come, because freedom is right and freedom works. It will come, because cooperation and good will among free people will carry the day.
We're in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country.
Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.
I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other.
Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.
Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression.
All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.
If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
Poland is not East or West. 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.
A people free to choose will always choose peace.
Never let the things you can't do, stop you from doing what you can.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.
While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.
I didn't leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.
Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.
If there's one observation that rings true in today's changing world, it is that freedom and peace go hand in hand.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.
Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.
Since I came to the White House, I've gotten two hearing aids, had a colon operation, a prostate operation, skin cancer, and I've been shot.... damn thing is, I've never felt better.
Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.
All great change in America begins at the dinner table.
Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.
Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive
Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.
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.
Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.
A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.
We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute.
Freedom is not free.
Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.
We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.
A picture is worth 1,000 denials.
Please tell me you're Republicans.
For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.
Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.
If you're explaining, you're losing.
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.
There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder.
If you think you can - you can!
We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.
I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future.
If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.
The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts.
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.
Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.
The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.
The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom and open-mindedness. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.
If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.
Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.
Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.
These young Americans sent a message to terrorists everywhere.... You can run but you can't hide.
Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.
We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.
America is, and always will be, a shining city on a hill.
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
People don't start wars, governments do.
I spoke to ears that refused to hear.
I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.
Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known.
Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.
Facts are stupid things.
Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.
Trees, how many of 'em do we need to look at?
A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.
If politics were a musical, it would be "Promises, Promises".
We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.
How can a president not be an actor?
I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.
I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.
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.
We are a nation that has a government―not the other way around.
Trust, but verify.
We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.
I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.
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.
What would this country be without this great land of ours.
Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of our world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.
The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.
My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.
A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?
Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.
We do not deny any nation's legitimate interest in security. But protecting the security of one nation by robbing another of its national independence and national traditions is not legitimate. In the long run, it is not even secure.
Just think how happy you'd be if you lost everything you have right now and then got it back.
There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.
My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose – somehow we win out.
Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.
For the average American, the message is clear. Liberalism is no longer the answer. It is the problem.
In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is.
There are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.
Radio was theater of the mind.
I don't think we'll solve the problem of the deficit until three things happen: We need more discipline on spending in Congress. We need a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget. And we need to give our presidents a line-item veto.
The key for any speaker is to establish his own point of view for the audience, so they can see the game through his eyes.
But our strategy for peace with freedom must also be based on strength—economic strength and military strength.
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
I was not a great communicator, but I communicated great things.
The best minds are not in government.
Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.
There is no humanity or charity in destroying self-reliance, dignity, and self-respect.
Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?
Preparing for the future must begin, as always, with our children. We need to set for them new and more rigorous goals.
I don't believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
I more than love you, I'm not whole without you. You are life itself to me. When you are gone I'm waiting for you to return so I can start living again.
If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.
We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.
I have no recollection of that ever happening.
If freedom, democracy, and the rights of man are to be preserved through the ages, free men and women must accept the responsibilities that go with their freedoms.
Great things can be accomplished, when it doesnt matter who gets the credit.
We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years.
It is up to us in our time to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.
N.S.C. briefing. Castro is very nervous. We'll try to keep him that way.
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Jefferson repeatedly said that the best government was the smallest government, that governments are not the masters of the people, but the servants of the people governed.
Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.
Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward, the Communist world.
Met with Jim Watt. He's taking a lot of abuse from environmental extremists but he's absolutely right. People are ecology too and they cant forage for food and live in caves.
America will never be whole as long as the right to life granted by our Creator is denied to the unborn.
I think growing up in a small town is a good foundation for anyone who decides to enter politics. You get to know people as individuals, not as blocs or members of special interest groups.
You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.
History is made by men and women of vision and courage. Tonight freedom is on the march.
Aren't lazy or unwilling to work: they just don't know how to free themselves from the welfare security blanket.
I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
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.
We do more for the under developed nations than anyone in the world but they act as if we're out to destroy them and they never say boo to the Soviets.
Yes, our country has its shortcomings, but there's no moral equivalency between democracy and totalitarianism.... There's no moral equivalency between propaganda and the truth.
Worst wheel on the wagon makes the most noise.
On the fundamental dignity of the human person, there can be no relenting!
We are never defeated unless we give up on God.
Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.
Here's my formula: I usually start with a joke or story to catch the audience's attention; then I tell them what I am going to tell them, I tell them, and then I tell them what I just told them.
As I have often said, governments don't produce economic growth, people do.
It is true that I opposed quotas in employment, education, and other areas. I consider quotas, whether they favor blacks or whites, men or women, to be a new form of discrimination as bad as the old ones.
If I could be elected president, I wanted to do what I could to bring about a spiritual revival in America.
I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant. It's just that they know so much that isn't so.
It seems to me that America is constantly reinventing what "America" means.
The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.
Morality in the long run aligned with strategy.
The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.
I hope when you are my age, you'll be able to say - as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. Our lives were a statement, not an apology.
How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Among the things he passed on to me were the belief that all men and women, regardless of their color or religion, are created equal and that individuals determine their own destiny; that is, it's largely their own ambition and hard work that determine their fate in life.
America was founded by people who believe that God was their rock of safety.
Where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees — you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?
No government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size—and that, in a way, became my theme.
For years, I've heard the question: "How could an actor be president?" I've sometimes wondered how you could be president and not be an actor.
The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief. Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.
The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.
A little less detente with the Politbureau and more encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of armored divisions.
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.
I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.
Wherever a beautiful soul has been there is a trail of beautiful memories.