“You can’t be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.”
   —Ronald Reagan

'No arsenal, no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'
  -- Ronald Reagan 

“The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all. I am not ready to take that risk. I believe that the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed if liberty in America is to survive.”
    —Ronald Reagan

“All of us denounce war—all of us consider it man’s greatest stupidity. And yet wars happen and they involve the most passionate lovers of peace because there are still barbarians in the world who set the price for peace at death or enslavement and the price is too high.”
   —Ronald Reagan

“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. Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we’re always ‘against,’ never ‘for’ anything.” —Ronald Reagan

“We have already made great progress toward ensuring a healthy environment. Our general course has been charted with the passage of numerous Federal and state environmental laws. Our state governments and many localities have strengthened their capabilities for dealing with environmental issues. Many of our industries are coming to view the generation of wastes as lost profit potential. It is now time to make sure that the paths we have chosen are the best ones. It is time to review the environmental regulations and to make certain we are doing the most efficient job possible. Certainly we can afford a clean environment, but we must work for it in the most creative and effective way.” —Ronald Reagan

“As a former Democrat, I can tell you [that]... back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party... down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England.”
    —Ronald Reagan

“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid. That’s why the Marxist vision of man without God must eventually be seen as an empty and a false faith—the second oldest in the world—first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with whispered words of temptation: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ The crisis of the Western world, Whittaker Chambers reminded us, exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God... This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men.”
   —Ronald Reagan

Surely then, if this is true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power. In doing so we can only assure that we will eventually be totally subject to it.”
    —Ronald Reagan

“There is a new term being used in Washington these days, tax expenditures. If you and I used that term we would be talking about things upon which the government spent our tax dollars. That, however, is not what government means. Tax expenditures is the new name government has for the share of our earnings it allows us to keep. You and I call them deductions.”
     —Ronald Reagan

“A number of years ago a President of this country declared that we have a rendezvous with destiny. In a world where terrorism spreads and the innocent die we must fulfill our destiny. If not us, who? If not now, when?”
    – Ronald Reagan

“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, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way. My fondest hope for each one of you—and especially for the young people here—is that you will love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism. May each of you have the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute works that will make the world a little better for your having been here. May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance and never lose your natural, God-given optimism. And finally, my fellow Americans, may every dawn be a great new beginning for America and every evening bring us closer to that shining city upon a hill.”
    —Ronald Reagan (1992)

“General Douglas MacArthur, a leader I deeply respected, is said to have written that no man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation and vigorous in its defense. Well, it’s all up to us now. We are the heirs of MacArthur, Pershing, Jefferson, and Washington—and of those Americans who put their lives on the line from Bunker Hill to Belleau Wood, from Normandy to Khe Sanh. We will be vigilant in the preservation of freedom and vigorous in its defense because we will not let down those who came before us or those who will follow.” —Ronald Reagan

“Every December across America the images of the Christmas season accumulate as this great holiday approaches. Preparations are made in homes and churches and shops in every city and town, and the land is full of traditional signs and symbols of its coming... Because of these traditions, no Christmas celebration truly stands alone. For most of us, the holidays bring back such a trove of memories, evoked by things as simple as the scent of pine or the painted scene on a greeting card, that our Christmases become not separate events on a calendar but a chain in which all are linked together as one. This is as it should be, for Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate not as individuals nor as a nation, but as a human family—and not merely as a family living in this age and time, but as a family linked through history, in ways we still cannot fully comprehend, to that First Christmas in Bethlehem.”
    —Ronald Re