Great Throughts Treasury

"We're in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country."

"We're the party that wants to see an America in which people still can get rich."

"We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. (Farewell Address to the Nation, January 20th, 1989)"

"We've gone astray from first principles. We've lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we've accomplished. Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives."

"We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free."

"Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."

"We will never forget them nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.'"

"Well I've said it before and I'll say it again — America's best days are yet to come. Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious achievements are just ahead."

"Well, I would - if they realized that we - again if - if we led them back to that stalemate only because that our retaliatory power, our seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive that they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off."

"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice."

"When cruelty is inflicted on innocent people, it discredits whatever cause"

"Why is it inflationary if the people keep their own money, and spend it the way they want to, [but] not inflationary if the government takes it and spends it the way it wants to?"

"When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat."

"When I've heard all I need to make a decision, I don't take a vote. I make a decision."

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"

"While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future."

"With our eyes fixed on the future, but recognizing the realities of today. ... we will achieve our destiny to be as a shining city on a hill for all mankind to see."

"Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears."

"Why should we be frightened? No people who have ever lived on this earth have fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom, or done more to advance the dignity of man than the living Americans, those Americans living in this land today."

"Within the covers of the Bible are all the answers for all the problems men face."

"Without God, there is no virtue because there's no prompting of the conscience. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

"Without a vision the people perish."

"You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery."

"You can accomplish much if you don't care who gets the credit."

"You can’t tax business. Business doesn’t pay taxes. It collects taxes."

"You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or a right. There is only an up or down: up to man's age-old dream -- the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course."

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."

"You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly."