(Editor’s note: All of the quotations this week are by Ronald Reagan.)

 

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in our 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 is was once like in the United States where men were free.

People don’t start wars, governments do.

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

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope for 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 can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.” And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.

Facts are stupid things.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.

We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity, and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success — only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period, contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.