Ronald Reagan - People Quotes

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What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

Ronald Reagan
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.

Ronald Reagan
Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.

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
As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human life. The American people have not had an opportunity to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged this issue.

Ronald Reagan
Of the many influences that have shaped the United States into a distinctive nation and people, none may be said to be more fundamental and enduring than the Bible.

Ronald Reagan
Americans … are not going to tolerate intimidation, terror and outright acts of war against this nation and its people. And we are especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich … There can be no place on earth where it is safe for these monsters to rest, or train or practice their cruel and deadly. We must act together – or unilateraly, if necessary – to ensue that these terrorists have no sanctuary, anywhere.

Ronald Reagan
Once people who have been deprived of basic freedom taste a little of it, they want all of it.

Ronald Reagan
We must remove government's smothering hand from where it does harm; we must seek to revitalize the proper functions of government. We do these things to set loose again the energy and the ingenuity of the American people. We do these things to reinvigorate those social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the individual and the state - and which remain the real source of our progress as a people.

Ronald Reagan
We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.

Ronald Reagan
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
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.

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
Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.

Ronald Reagan
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still.

Ronald Reagan
I intend to go right on appointing highly qualified individuals of the highest personal integrity to the bench, individuals who understand the danger of short-circuiting the electoral process and disenfranchising the people through judicial activism.

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

Ronald Reagan
As two proud and independent peoples, there is much that distinguishes us one from the other, but there is also much that we share: a vast continent, with its common hardships and uncommon duties; generations of mutual respect and support, and an abiding friendship that grows ever stronger.

Ronald Reagan
It doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?

Ronald Reagan
The people of Central America - and, in a broader sense, the entire developing world - need to know first-hand that freedom and opportunity are not just for the elite, but the birthright of every citizen; that property is not just something enjoyed by a few, but can be owned by any individual who works hard and makes correct decisions.

Ronald Reagan
As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it, we will not surrender for it - now or ever.

Ronald Reagan
Do what's right and you'll please some of the people and astound the rest.

Ronald Reagan
Revolution means democracy in today's world, not the enslavement of peoples to the corrupt and degrading horrors of totalitarianism

Ronald Reagan
Dreams became issues of East versus West. Hopes became political rhetoric. Progress became a search for power and domination. Somewhere the truth was lost that people don't make war, governments do.

Ronald Reagan
We're the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.

Ronald Reagan
Some people may still ask: Would the Soviets ever use their formidable military power? Well, again, can we afford to believe they won't? There is Afghanistan, and in Poland, the Soviets denied the will of the people and, in so doing, demonstrated to the world how their military power could also be used to intimidate.
The final fact is that the Soviet Union is acquiring what can only be considered an offensive military force. They have continued to build far more intercontinental ballistic missiles than they could possibly need simply to deter an attack. Their conventional forces are trained and equipped not so much to defend against an attack as they are to permit sudden, surprise offensives of their own.

Ronald Reagan
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.

Ronald Reagan
When I took the oath of office, I pledged loyalty to only one special interest group - 'We the people'.

Ronald Reagan
We have found, in our country, that when people have the right to make decisions as close to home as possible, they usually make the right decisions.

Ronald Reagan
You hear a lot of jokes every once in a while about 'Silent Cal Coolidge.' The joke is on the people who make the jokes. Look at his record. He cut the taxes four times. We had probably the greatest growth and prosperity that we've ever known. I have taken heed of that because if he did that by doing nothing, maybe that's the answer.

Ronald Reagan