Ronald Reagan

But our strategy for peace with freedom must also be based on strength — economic strength and military strength.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty

Life is one grand sweet song so start the music

I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.

Trust, but verify.

You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.

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.

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom.

They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where — because of our past excesses — it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don't believe that. And, I don't believe you do either. That is why I am seeking the presidency. I cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity. I don't agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to other hands. I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world.

Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.

The first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy. If the people running the welfare program had let their clientele find other ways of making a living, that would have reduced their importance and their budget.