Ronald Quotes & Sayings

Directly down the lawn and accross the Ellipse from the White House are those ordered, classic lines of the Jefferson Memorial and the eyes of the 19-foot statue that gaze directly into the White House, a reminder to any of us who might occupy that mansion of the quality of mind and generosity of heart that once abided there and has been so rarely seen there again. — Ronald Reagan

We still have too much air and water pollution and we still need to work to reduce it. But we also need to put the problem of pollution into a historical as well as scientific perspective ... — Ronald Reagan

AUGUST 5, 1981. That's the date it became official. It's rare that we can point to an exact date when a business theory or idea becomes an accepted practice. But in the case of mass layoffs, we can. August 5, 1981, was the day President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers. — Simon Sinek

An informed patriotism is what we want. — Ronald Reagan

I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers ... 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 for ourselves. — Ronald Reagan

When Ronald Reagan spoke a thing aloud, he believed it forever and for always. By the time he started running for president, in 1976, he had already developed an unwavering and steadfast faith in the correctness of whatever came out of his mouth. — Rachel Maddow

Work and family are at the center of our lives, the foundation of our dignity as a free people. — Ronald Reagan

Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world. — Ronald Reagan

To be old is to be part of a huge and ordinary multitude ... the reason why old age was venerated in the past was because it was extraordinary. — Ronald Blythe

The little dictator who went to Moscow in his green fatigues to receive a bear hug did not forsake the doctrine of Lenin when he returned to the West and appeared in a two-piece suit. (On Daniel Ortega Saavedra) — Ronald Reagan

The last thing I stole was a box of Coca Cola from a parked truck in Adelaide. I was nice and drunk. It was New Year's Eve. And that was about 28 years ago. — Ronald Biggs

Complex man that he was, J. Edgar Hoover left nothing to chance. The director shrewdly recognized that building what became known as the world's greatest law enforcement agency would not necessarily keep him in office. — Ronald Kessler

Because of the terrorist threat, the FBI and CIA have become as important as the military in preserving our freedom. Yet while thanking our military is standard practice in American life, no one thinks of thanking the FBI, the CIA, or the rest of the intelligence community for keeping us safe since 9/11. — Ronald Kessler

Given that the majority of communication to which we are subjected in a day consists of advertising, if nearly all of that advertising insists on regarding us as pampered children, what does that do to us? It winds us up with a godforsaken second term of smarmy granddad President Ronald Wilson Reagan for one. — Kathleen Rooney

Even now I wonder what I might have accomplished if I'd studied harder — Ronald Reagan

When those who are governed do too little, those who govern can - and often will - do too much. — Ronald Reagan

If you can't summarize an issue on one page, you don't understand the issue well enough. — Ronald Reagan

The best writers tend to look the roughest in photos. At least that's the excuse I use for why I look so bad in mine. — R.D. Ronald

The people's instincts are still right. You see them come to the rescue of someone-a child who falls down a well-hundreds of people rush to help, and labor and equipment are volunteered without any thought of who's going to pay for it. This is a basic feeling in Americans. They don't stand back in such a circumstance and ask what the government's going to do about it. — Ronald Reagan

In America, our origins matter less than our destination, and that is what democracy is all about. — Ronald Reagan

When Carter finally agreed to a debate, the date was set for October 28, one week before the election, and we were delighted. The debate went well for me and may have turned on only four little words. They popped out of my mouth after Carter claimed that I had once opposed Medicare benefits for Social Security recipients. It wasn't true and I said so: "There you go again . . . — Ronald Reagan

I don't believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. — Ronald Reagan

God, the source of our knowledge, has been expelled from the classroom. He gives us His greatest blessing, life, and yet many would condone the taking of innocent life. We expect Him to protect us in a crisis, but turn away from Him too often in our day-to-day living. I wonder if He isn't waiting for us to wake up. — Ronald Reagan

Revolution means democracy in today's world, not the enslavement of peoples to the corrupt and degrading horrors of totalitarianism — Ronald Reagan

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and avoidance of large federal deficits on the other; it is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, as long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance the budget - just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, the paradoxical truth is that the tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. — Ronald Reagan

Where in this wide world can a person find nobility without pride, friendship without envy or beauty without vanity? Here, where grace is laced with muscle and strength by gentleness confined. He serves without servility, he has fought without enmity. There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent; there is nothing so quick, nothing more patient. — Ronald Duncan

Americans are not going to tolerate intimidation, terror and outright acts of war against this nation and its people. And we are especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich ... There can be no place on earth where it is safe for these monsters to rest,or train or practice their cruel and deadly. We must act together - or unilateraly, if necessary - to ensue that these terrorists have no sanctuary, anywhere. — Ronald Reagan

One report said that since my time on the run I've had 2,500 girlfriends. I mean you got to realize, I've been on the run for more than 30 years, I have got to have had more than that! — Ronald Biggs

The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity. — Ronald Reagan

We need to make some dramatic, concrete moves to escape the materialism that seeps into our minds via diabolically clever and incessant advertising. We have been brainwashed to believe that bigger houses, more prosperous businesses, and more sophisticated gadgets are the way to joy and fulfillment. As a result, we are caught in an absurd, materialistic spiral. The more we make, the more we think we need in order to live decently and respectably. Somehow we have to break this cycle because it makes us sin against our needy brothers and sisters and, therefore, against our Lord. And it also destroys us. Sharing with others is the way to real joy. — Ronald J. Sider

When we truly realize that we are all alone is when we need others the most. — Ronald Anthony Cross

I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American. — Ronald Reagan

Spending on the military doesn't increase the deficit. — Ronald Reagan

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 ... He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do. — Ronald Reagan

The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a Government Program — Ronald Reagan

The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits - not animals ... . There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. — Ronald Reagan

I felt that 'Deep Space' was the way to do a spin off series of an existing franchise where you really are doing a very different show. It's a different format. It's a different feeling. — Ronald D. Moore

We will remain steady. We will pursue every avenue in the search for peace and stability. — Ronald Reagan

God has been with me in my whole career. — Ronald Isley

You can achieve anything in politics provided that you let someone else take the credit. — Ronald Reagan

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. — Ronald Reagan

Only when you are self-employed do you fully realize how much more efficient you become when your output directly correlates with how much money you make. — Ronald Kessler

Never let the things you can't do, stop you from doing what you can. — Ronald Reagan

Elvis epitomised America, and for that we shall be eternally grateful. There will never be anyone else like him. Let's all rejoice in his music. — Ronald Reagan

A nation without borders is no nation at all. — Ronald Reagan

America must remain freedom's staunchest friend, for freedom is our best ally and it is the world's only hope to conquer poverty and preserve peace. — Ronald Reagan

A prolonged future doesn't excite me. It would have to have a point. — Ronald Colman

[On her father, Ronald Reagan:] How do you argue with someone who states that the people who are sleeping on the grates of the streets of America 'are homeless by choice'? — Patti Davis

I, in my own mind, have always thought of America as a place in the divine scheme of things that was set aside as a promised land ... Any person with the courage, with the desire to tear up their roots, to strive for freedom, to attempt and dare to live in a strange and foreign place, to travel halfway across the world was welcome here. — Ronald Reagan

To say Congress is spending like drunken sailors is an insult to drunken sailors. — Ronald Reagan

President George Herbert Walker Bush ran as a strong conservative, ran to continue the third term of Ronald Reagan, continue the Ronald Reagan revolution. Then he raised taxes and in '92 ran as an establishment moderate - same candidate, two very different campaigns. — Ted Cruz

We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him. — Ronald Reagan

Progress on problems is the measure of leadership; leaders mobilize people to face problems, and communities make progress on problems because leaders challenge them and help them to do so. — Ronald A. Heifetz

We're more than friends and neighbors and allies; we are kin, who together have built the most productive relationship between any two countries in the world today. — Ronald Reagan

... Ending a conflict is not so simple, not just calling it off and coming home. Because the price for that kind of peace could be a thousand years of darkness for generation's Viet Nam borned. — Ronald Reagan

Our American tradition of neighbor helping neighbor has always been one of our greatest strengths and most noble traditions. — Ronald Reagan

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

Mr. President: We, women political prisoners of the Soviet Union, congratulate you on your reelection to the spot of President of the USA. We look with hope to your country which is on the road of FREEDOM and respect for HUMAN RIGHTS. We wish you success on this road. — Ronald Reagan

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets. — Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan felt very great regret about the deficits to which he contributed on his watch. — Eugene Jarecki

It wouild be very discouraging if somewhere down the line you could ask a computer if the Riemann hypothesis is correct and it said, 'Yes, it is true, but you won't be able to understand the proof.' John Horgan. — Ronald Graham

Facts are stupid things. — Ronald Reagan

I believe our education system as a whole has not integrated the histories of all people into our education system, just the Eurocentric view of itself, and the White-centered view of African Americans, and even this is slim to nonexistent. What I find is that most people don't know the fact they don't know, because of the complete lack of information. — Ronald Takaki

Acceptance of death when it arrives is one thing, but to allow it to upstage the joys of living is ingratitude. — Ronald Blythe

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

I've always thought New Year's Day was an especially American tradition, full of the optimism and hope we're famous for in our daily lives
an energy and confidence we call the American spirit. Perhaps because we know we control our own destiny, we believe deep down inside that working together we can make each new year better than the old. — Ronald Reagan

Intelligence reports say Castro is very worried about me. I'm very worried that we can't come up with something to justify his worrying. — Ronald Reagan

I'd like to harness their youthful energy with a strap. — Ronald Reagan

I feel that the whole Western World will benefit by the resurrection of the neutron bomb project. — Ronald Reagan

When the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing. — Ronald Reagan

Many a man has failed because he had his wishbone where his backbone should have been. — Ronald Reagan

He has attempted to muddy the waters, but I think anyone that watched the battle that we had - you know, there was a time for choosing, as [Ronald] Reagan put it, where there was a battle over amnesty. And some chose, like Sen.[Marco] Rubio, to stand with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and support a massive amnesty plan. — Ted Cruz

Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol.
'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed.
Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight. — R.D. Ronald

The bar staff and croupiers all wore black with the same green triangle logo emblazoned on their shirts, and contact lenses which made their eyes shine an eerie, vibrant green. The bar optics glowed with the same green light, the intensity of which was linked to the music. As the bartender walked away to fetch the drinks, a breakdown in the techno track commenced and the bottles began to palpitate. The bartender's eyes glowed with a hallucinatory felinity that made Mangle feel nervous. — R.D. Ronald

Law and freedom must be indivisible partners. For without law, there can be no freedom, only choas and disorder; and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression. — Ronald Reagan

I think traditional supermarkets have to pay attention to the fact that America is more and more conscious of lifestyle. — Ronald Burkle

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources. — Ronald Reagan

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

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. — Ronald Reagan

I want to get the point across that you may not have money to give to a charity, whether that is Ronald McDonald House or Broadway Cares or DIFFA, but you can help RAISE money or give your time and talents. — Douglas Wilson

To say that 'wealth in America is so unfairly distributed in America,' as Ronald Dworkin does, is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed: at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it. — Thomas Sowell

I have flown twice over Mt St. Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about. — Ronald Reagan

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. — Ronald Reagan

We know, deep down inside, it's wrong! There's nothing you can say to ever make it right! Killing is killing, no matter how you slice it! And the ones doing all the killing should be locked up, and be forced to watch the world transform from, This evil place they've created, To the wonderful place we should be creating! — Ronald Richter

I often quote Ronald Reagan, who is pretty close to my favorite President ever, I will have to say that, but one of my favorite remarks he ever made was that when you look at Federal programs, there is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program. — Marsha Blackburn

Ultimately abortion takes place because there is something wrong within the culture, within the system, and not simply because this or that particular woman is seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy. — Ronald Rolheiser

In Libya, you are made aware the whole time of the abandonment of things, the material leftovers of receding cultures — Ronald Bruce St. John

It should be clear to everyone that the nation's steadfast policy should afford every American of working age a realistic opportunity to acquire the ownership and control of some meaningful form of property in a growing national economy. — Ronald Reagan

I know I'm not in government anymore. In fact I'm out of work. — Ronald Reagan

The most fundamental paradox is that, if we're never to use force, we must be prepared to use it and to use it successfully. We Americans don't want war, and we don't start fights. We don't maintain a strong military force to conquer or coerce others. The purpose of our military is simple and straightforward: We want to prevent war by deterring others from the aggression that causes war. If our efforts are successful, we will have peace and never be forced into battle. There will never be a need to fire a single shot. That's the paradox of deterrence. — Ronald Reagan

Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price. — Ronald Reagan

In our observances this Memorial Day, we honor the brave Americans who paid the highest price for their commitment to the ideals of peace, freedom, and justice. Our debt to them can be paid only by our own recommitment to preserving those same ideals. — Ronald Reagan

He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from. — R.D. Ronald

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. — Barack Obama

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver 5 minutes longer. — Ronald Reagan

Throughout his life, Ronald Reagan believed America is capable of great things and its people could and would lead the way if left unburdened by taxation and regulation. — William L. Jenkins

A lot of people need happiness in their lives ... those who have lost their loved ones, those who have lost jobs and other things. Let your smile be a source of happiness to them and everyone else you meet. — Ronald Austin

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

Any time there's a lot of pressure, it's life and death, you go toward this very dark kind of humor. Soldiers do it. Cops do it. — Ronald Perelman

Christian monks and nuns were, in effect, the guardians of culture, as they were virtually the only people who could read and write before the fourteenth century. It is interesting therefore that most of the native English culture they preserved is not in Latin, the language of the church, but in Old English, the language of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. — Ronald Carter