Ronald Reagan Quotes - 73 quotes

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) was the 40th President of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. He was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan grew up in a modest household and attended Eureka College, where he studied economics and sociology. Before his political career, Reagan wa... show more

 “Parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children,” he said. “Well-grounded patriotism is no longer in style” for those media figures who direct the course of popular culture.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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

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 Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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.

- Ronald Reagan

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 All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

- Ronald Reagan

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 You'd be surprised how much being a good actor pays off.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

- Ronald Reagan

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 I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.

- Ronald Reagan

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 The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.

- Ronald Reagan

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 With the destructive power of today's weapons, keeping the peace is not just a goal; it's a sacred obligation. But maintaining peace requires more than sincerity and idealism—more than optimism and good will. As you know well, peace is a product of hard, strenuous labor by those dedicated to its preservation. It requires realism, not wishful thinking.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great and good philosopher and teacher. Others of us believe in the Divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that He was and is the promised Prince of Peace. . . . Tonight, in millions of American homes, the glow of the Christmas tree is a reflection of the love Jesus taught us.

- Ronald Reagan

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  I have always believed that the message of Jesus is one of hope and joy. I know there are those who recognize Christmas Day as the birthday of a great and good man, a wise teacher who gave us principles to live by. And then there are others of us who believe that He was the Son of God, that He was Divine. If we live our lives for truth, for love, and for God, we never need be afraid.

- Ronald Reagan

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 We do not know the exact moment the Christ Child was born, only what we would have seen if we’d been standing there as we stand here now: Suddenly, a star from heaven shining in our eyes, shining with brilliant beauty across the skies, a star pointing toward eternity in the night, like a great ring of pure and endless light, and then all was calm, and all was bright. Such was the beginning of one solitary life that would shake the world as never before or since. When we speak of Jesus and of His life, we speak of a man revered as a prophet and teacher by people of all religions, and Christians speak of someone greater – a man Who was and is Divine. He brought forth a power that is infinite and a promise that is eternal, a power greater than all mankind’s military might, for His power is Godly love, love that can lift our hearts and soothe our sorrows and heal our wounds and drive away our fears. . . . If each of us could give but a fraction to one another of what He gave to the whole human family, how many hearts could heal, how much sorrow and pain could be driven away.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one."

- Ronald Reagan

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 If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

- Ronald Reagan

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 I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem

- Ronald Reagan

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 I know what I'm about to say now is controversial, but I have to say it. This nation cannot continue turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the taking of some 4,000 unborn children's lives every day. That's one every 21 seconds. One every 21 seconds. We cannot pretend that America is preserving her first and highest ideal, the belief that each life is sacred, when we've permitted the deaths of 15 million helpless innocents since the Roe versus Wade decision. 15 million children who will never laugh, never sing, never know the joy of human love, will never strive to heal the sick, feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights. We are all infinitely poorer for their loss.

- Ronald Reagan

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 They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us.

- Ronald Reagan

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 There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power.

- Ronald Reagan

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 When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people's weapons. It makes it so much easier for the secret police to operate, it makes it so much easier to force the will of the ruler upon the ruled.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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

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 Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well, if it's a definition he wants, I'll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

- Ronald Reagan

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 With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there's one individual who's not being considered at all. That's the one who is being aborted. And I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Honey, I forgot to duck.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.

- Ronald Reagan

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 When the chips are down and the decisions are made as to who the candidates will be, then the 11th commandment prevails and everybody goes to work, and that is: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Yes, because for many years I was a Democrat.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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. We can be so thankful that Dr. King raised his mighty eloquence for love and hope rather than for hostility and bitterness. He took the tension he found in our nation, a tension of injustice, and channeled it for the good of America and all her people.

- Ronald Reagan

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 So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring 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 and good and evil.

- Ronald Reagan

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 I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves.

- Ronald Reagan

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 History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

- Ronald Reagan

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 I'm convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less than to live our own lives according to our values — at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

- Ronald Reagan

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 One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

- Ronald Reagan

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 It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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.

- Ronald Reagan

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 There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us.

- Ronald Reagan

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

- Ronald Reagan

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 And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

- Ronald Reagan

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 The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

- Ronald Reagan

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 They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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 last step into a thousand years of darkness.

- Ronald Reagan

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 For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers, they just are not easy ones.

- Ronald Reagan

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 The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom...

- Ronald Reagan

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 There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism — government.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on 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.

- Ronald Reagan

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 From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty 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....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....

- Ronald Reagan

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 Some people work an entire lifetime and wonder if they ever made a difference to the world. But the Marines don't have that problem.

- Ronald Reagan

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 “We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important,” he urged parents and teachers. “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”

- Ronald Reagan

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 “All great change in America begins at the dinner table,” he said in his farewell address. “So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.”

- Ronald Reagan

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 “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.”

- Ronald Reagan

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 Not to the extent of throwing up my hands and saying, "Well, it's all over." No. I think whichever generation and at whatever time, when the time comes, the generation that is there, I think will have to go on doing what they believe is right.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense.

- Ronald Reagan

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 I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.

- Ronald Reagan

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 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.

- Ronald Reagan

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 “If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

- Ronald Reagan

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 Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives

- Ronald Reagan

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 The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help"

- Ronald Reagan

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 I did turn 75 today - but remember, that's only 24 Celsius

- Ronald Reagan

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 We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.

- Ronald Reagan

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 The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

- Ronald Reagan

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