Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

American 40th President of the United States, Governor of California and Radio, Film and Television Star

"Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man."

"Democracy is not a fragile flower but still it needs cultivating."

"Die-hard conservatives thought that if I couldn't get everything I asked for, I should jump off the cliff with the flag flying-go down in flames. No, if I can get 70 or 80 percent of what it is I'm trying to get ... I'll take that and then continue to try to get the rest in the future."

"Double, no triple, our troubles and we'd still be better off than any other people on earth. It is time that we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause."

"Don't be afraid to see what you see."

"Draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending."

"Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known."

"Dreams became issues of East versus West. Hopes became political rhetoric. Progress became a search for power and domination. Somewhere the truth was lost that people don't make war, governments do."

"During my first press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution."

"Even Albert Einstein reportedly needed help on his 1040 form."

"Every dollar the Federal Government does not take from us, every decision it does not make for us will make our economy stronger, our lives more abundant, our future more free."

"Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States."

"Every new day begins with possibilities. It's up to us to fill it with the things that move us toward progress and peace."

"Facts are stubborn things."

"Excellence does not begin in Washington."

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time."

"For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals... You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation?"

"Four years ago we said we would invigorate our economy by giving people greater freedom and incentives to take risks and letting them keep more of what they earned. We did what we promised, and a great industrial giant is reborn."

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things."

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

"Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged."

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

"God's miracles are to be found in nature itself; the wind and waves, the wood that becomes a tree - all of these are explained biologically, but behind them is the hand of God."

"Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets."

"Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them."

"Government can't solve the problem. Government IS the problem."

"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves."

"Government has laid its hand on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an ever-increasing degree interferes with the people's right to know. Government tends to grow, government programs take on weight and momentum as public servants say, always with the best of intentions. But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or economically as the private sector of the economy."

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

"Government is bad when it takes more than 30 percent of a taxpayer's income in taxes. Proudhon was wrong when he said property is theft; it's our federal budget that is institutionalized theft."

"Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid."

"Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives."

"Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth."

"Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people."

"Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed."

"Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer."

"Governments have a tendency not to solve problems, only to rearrange them."

"History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."

"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20% of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government. . . . When it reaches 25%, there comes an increase in lawlessness."

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose."

"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

"How can a president not be an actor?"

"However, our task is far from over. Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Listening to the liberals, you'd think that the 1980's were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don't know about you, but I'm getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They're claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there."

"I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer, just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals . . . The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

"I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow men."

"I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself."

"I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

"I believe Moses was 80 when God first commissioned him for public service."

"I believe with all my heart that standing up for America means standing up for the God who has so blessed our land. We need God's help to guide our nation through stormy seas. But we can't expect Him to protect America in a crisis if we just leave Him over on the shelf in our day-to-day living."