Ronald Reagan Quotes

558 Sourced Quotes

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
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Ronald Reagan
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.

Ronald Reagan
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
What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.

Ronald Reagan
Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

Ronald Reagan
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.

Ronald Reagan
Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards for man-made sources.

Ronald Reagan
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Ronald Reagan
A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.

Ronald Reagan
No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

Ronald Reagan
Until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together? There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this.

Ronald Reagan
I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind.

Ronald Reagan
A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

Ronald Reagan
I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as 'the masses.'

Ronald Reagan
Let us ask ourselves; "What kind of people do we think we are?"

Ronald Reagan
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.

Ronald Reagan
And one more idea which may be laughed and sneered at in some supposedly sophisticated circles, but I just have to believe that the loving God who has blessed this land and thus made us a good and caring people should never have been expelled from America's classrooms. It's time to welcome Him back, because whenever we've opened ourselves and trusted in Him, we've gained not only moral courage but intellectual strength...

Ronald Reagan
To do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

Ronald Reagan
I will stand on, and continue to use, the figures I have used, because I believe they are correct. Now, I'm not going to deny that you don't now and then slip up on something; no one bats a thousand.

Ronald Reagan
If you put it on the table as a bargaining chip, it becomes a bargaining chip

Ronald Reagan
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.

Ronald Reagan
Meaningful work, not welfare, is every American's hope, and we have a continuing responsibility to make those hopes a lasting reality.

Ronald Reagan
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. 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. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers.

Ronald Reagan
The fourth landing of the Columbia is the historical equivalent of the driving of the golden spike which completed the first transcontinental railroad. It marks our entrance into a new era.

Ronald Reagan