Ronald Reagan Quotes

I won a nickname, "The Great Communicator." But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. 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. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.

I was going to have an opening statement, but I decided that what I was going to say I wanted to get a lot of attention, so I'm going to wait and leak it.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

These young Americans sent a message to terrorists everywhere. . . . You can run but you can't hide.

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

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.

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.

No government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size — and that, in a way, became my theme.

At our one local movie theater, blacks and whites had to sit apart — the blacks in the balcony. My mother and father urged my brother and me to bring home our black playmates, to consider them equals, and to respect the religious views of our friends, whatever they were. My brother’s best friend was black, and when they went to the movies, Neil sat with him in the balcony. My mother always taught us: “Treat thy neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you,” and “Judge everyone by how they act, not what they are.

The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.

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

There are no such things as limits to growth, because there
are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence,
imagination, and wonder.

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

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

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.