Quotes from Ronald Reagan

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

The best minds are not in government.

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.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

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.

If we're free to dare — and we are — if we're free to give — and we are — then we're free to shape the future and have within our grasp all that we dream the future will be.

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.

America will never be whole as long as the right to life granted by our Creator is denied to the unborn.

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

Doing for people what they can, and ought to do for themselves, is a dangerous experiment," the great labor leader Samuel Gompers said. "In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends on their own initiative." The classic "liberal" believed individuals should be masters of their own destiny and the least government is the best government; these are precepts of freedom and self-reliance that are at the root of the American way and the American spirit.

At my first press conference I was asked whether we could trust the Soviet Union, and I said that the answer to that question could be found in the writings of Soviet leaders: It had always been their philosophy that it was moral to lie or cheat for the purpose of advancing Communism.

If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under. ~Ronald Reagan