Explore Quotes by Ronald Reagan

Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

America is too great for small dreams.

There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.

I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long.

I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.

Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community?

We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process.

The NRA believes America's laws were made to be obeyed and that our Constitutional liberties are just as important today as 200 years ago. And by the way, the Constitution does not say Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution says 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'

Education is like a diamond with many facets: It includes the basic mastery of numbers and letters that give us access to the treasury of human knowledge, accumulated and refined through the ages; it includes technical and vocational training as well as instruction in science, higher mathematics, and humane letters.

In Israel, free men and women are every day demonstrating the power of courage and faith. Back in 1948 when Isreal was founded, pundits claimed the new country could never survive. Today, no one questions that. Israel is a land of stability and democracy in a region of tyranny and unrest.

I've heard drug experts say they believe if penicillin were discovered today, the FDA wouldn't license it.

I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual.

That's the nice thing about this job. You get to quote yourself shamelessly. If you don't, Larry Speakes will.

Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. We have to fight for it and protect it and then hand it to them, so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.

The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.

Now, I happen to be an optimist.

A stronger defense is an investment in peace.

Meaningful work, not welfare, is every American's hope, and we have a continuing responsibility to make those hopes a lasting reality.