Ronald Reagan Quotes

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines.

No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote; but a Republican bucking the giveaway trend might re-create some voters who have been staying home.

I have a feeling that we are doing better in the war [in Vietnam] than the people have been told.

Americans don't go around carrying guns with the idea they're using them to influence other Americans. There's no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

It's time for a change. You can sense it. Or, you can read about it any day of the week in the newspaper. Beatniks, taxes, riots, crime, delinquency, drug addiction, pornography. Our state is a leader in each of these areas...Common sense... says helping those who are unable to help themselves does not include taxing hard working men and women who are busy providing for their own families, in order to provide for lazy freeloaders who make welfare a way of life. Common sense wouldn't allow a few rabble-rousing malcontents to totally disrupt the campus of one of the greatest educational institutions in the world...VOTE FOR REAGAN-FINCH TEAM ON NOVEMBER 8!

I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Every morning Nancy and I turn to see what he has to say about people of our respective birth signs.

So much of our profession is taken up with pretending ... that an actor must spend at least half his waking hours in fantasy.

Some seem to forget that I’ve worked with those on movies and television. I warn you. Television may be exciting, but always take what you watch or read with a grain of salt. The more extreme these people act, the more money they make. They don’t care about us. You should always do your own research using verified primary sources. Editorials or articles published can be exciting, but they are seldom the truth. This country will eventually be destroyed for the sake of a paycheck.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary.

It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

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.

The doctor begins to lose freedom. . . . First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren't equally divided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can't live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go. . . . All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won't decide, when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.