Famous Ronald Reagan Quotes

Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.
By Ronald Reagan on Afghanistan

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
By Ronald Reagan on Aggression

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
By Ronald Reagan on Berlin Wall

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.
By Ronald Reagan on Communism

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
By Ronald Reagan on Conservatism

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.
By Ronald Reagan on D-Day

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. 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. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
By Ronald Reagan on Freedom

The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.
By Ronald Reagan on Freedom

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.
By Ronald Reagan on Freedom

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions.
By Ronald Reagan on Freedom

Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.
By Ronald Reagan on Government

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.
By Ronald Reagan on Government

I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation — from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries.
By Ronald Reagan on Great Communicator

We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look.
By Ronald Reagan on Heroes

Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts.
By Ronald Reagan on History

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.
By Ronald Reagan on Information

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.
By Ronald Reagan on Iran-Contra Scandal

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
By Ronald Reagan on Jimmy Carter

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.
By Ronald Reagan on Martin Luther King

My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.
By Ronald Reagan on Russia

They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer — not an easy answer — but simple.
By Ronald Reagan on Simplicity

This is not the time for political fun and games. This is the time for a new beginning. I ask you now to put aside any feelings of frustration or helplessness about our political institutions and join me in this dramatic but responsible plan to reduce the enormous burden of Federal taxation on you and your family.
By Ronald Reagan on Taxation

To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.
By Ronald Reagan on Transition of Power

One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all.
By Ronald Reagan on United Nations

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

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain.
By Ronald Reagan on World War Two