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Reagan

Meaning no disrespect to the religious convictions of others, I still can't help wondering how we can explain away what to me is the greatest miracle of all and which is recorded in history. No one denies there was such a man, that he lived and that he was put to death by crucifixion.
Where … is the miracle I spoke of? Well consider this and let your imagination translate the story into our own time--possibly to your own home town. A young man whose father is a carpenter grows up working in his father's shop. One day he puts down his tools and walks out of his father's shop. He starts preaching on street corners and in the nearby countryside, walking from place to place, preaching all the while, even though he is not an ordained minister. He never gets farther than an area perhaps 100 miles wide at the most.
He does this for three years. Then he is arrested, tried and convicted. There is not court of appeal, so he is executed at age 33 along with two common thieves. Those in charge of his execution roll dice to see who gets his clothing--the only possessions he has. His family cannot afford a burial place for him so he is interred in a borrowed tomb. End of story? No, this uneducated, propertyless young man who…left no written word has, for 2000 years, had a greater effect on the world than all the rulers, kings, emperors; all the conquerors, generals and admirals; all the scholars, scientists and philosophers who have ever lived--all of them put together.
How do we explain that?…Unless he really was what he said he was?

America's prosperity was not a gift from the government or anyone else. Free enterprise, not government, is the source from which our blessings flow.

The Democratic Party is offering [Blacks] one kind of paternalism for another. The Republican Party is offering them an individual destiny, the right to be free.

Because no government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size, government programs once launched never go out of existence. A government agency is the nearest thins to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.

The result is that we're beginning to ignore the sacredness of the individual. If we keep going in that direction there can be one outcome: our surrender to a totally government planned and controlled society. And when it happens it will be called the "fulfillment of the liberal dream." But in fact it will be fascism, because that what fascism is: private ownership with total government control.

According to them[history professors], it is the United States that has aggressive ambitions which cause the Soviets to arm defensively for protection. Logic obviously is not part of the approved course for at least some history teachers.

I'm not trigger happy. There have been four wars in my lifetime…none came about because the US was too strong.

The principles of wealth-creation transcend time, people and place. Governments which deliberately subvert them by denouncing God, smothering faith, destroying freedom, and confiscating wealth have impoverished their people. Communism works only in Heaven, where they don't need it, and in Hell, where they've already got it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
--a microphone test

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.

Nations do not distrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they distrust each other.

No more abandonments of friends by the US. We don't care if we're not liked. We're going to be respected.

Freedom is indivisible--there is no "s" on the end of it. You can erode freedom, diminish it, but you cannot divide it and choose to keep "some freedoms" while giving up others.

I am for affirmative action; I am against quotas. I have lived long enough to know a time in this country when quotas were used to discriminate, not end discrimination.

Their signs said make love, not war, but they didn't look like they could do either.

How do you discuss sex in schools without discussing morality?

I used to fantasize what it would be like if everyone in Government would slip away and close the doors and disappear. See how long it would take the people of this country to miss them. I think that life would go on, and people would keep on doing the things they are doing, and we would get along better than we think.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We can preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we can 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.

The American dream that we have nursed for so long in this country, and lately neglected, is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.

The system has never failed us once. But we have failed the system every time we lose faith in the magic of the market place.

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

We are told God is dead. Well, He isn't. We just can't talk to Him in the classroom anymore.

I think that anyone who has a business has a right to run it the way he wants to. If he decides everybody has to wear a necktie or nobody has to, that is up to him. I just don't like to see government passing laws to do whatever government thinks he should do.

I have a dream that some day we can provide you with the revenue sources that have been co-opted by the federal government, so that local money no longer has to make the round trip through Washington before you can use it back in your local area--minus a certain carrying charge.

The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the difference between a jacket and a straitjacket.

Republicans believe every day is the 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15th.

A strange sort of no-growth, no-development syndrome is proposed without regard for the consequences this might have on the lives of our people or the vitality of our economy. It is time to remember that we are ecology too.

Government is here to protect us from each other. Government cannot possibly set itself up to protect us from ourselves.

Camelot is not dead. Camelot is this country and Camelot will die only if we fail to meet our responsibilities and keep our principles alive for the world.

Once people who have been deprived of basic freedom taste a little of it, they want all of it,

No one, of course, wants to use these [nuclear] weapons but the enemy should never be told we won't. He should go to bed every night fearful that we might.

The elimination of poverty was a worthy goal in itself but during the Depression we has an all-time low in crime. I cannot help but believe that goods and privileges careless given or lightly earned are lightly regarded.

The taxpayer, that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take a civil service examination.

There is a growing tendency for schools and even some churches to challenge the mores and values of parents, to encourage a young person to develop his own ideas and standards. That's healthy only if the young person already has the maturity of having accepted and lived with a set of values in his own family. Otherwise he is likely to fall victim to the first doctrinaire teacher or minister who gets to him, just to maintain a sense of security. That's when education becomes indoctrination.

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

I don't think it's necessary to win a popularity contest with your kids, and especially not while they're kids. Parents should be more concerned with what their kids will think of them when they reach thirty. Or, more importantly, what their kids will think of themselves. Most of us, when we look back over our lives and our reactions to our parents, discover that today we accept and are grateful for things we rebelled against at the age of fifteen or twenty.

My idea of the way to start is to take Government off the backs of the people and make you free again!

"If it feels good, do it." "Whatever's right." But right for whom? "If it feels good, do it" is a good slogan until someone wants to feel good by hitting you over the head.

The spectre our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face is that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and appeasement does not give you a choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender.

I've always believed that we were, each of us, put here for a reason, that there is a plan, somehow a divine plan for all of us. I know now that whatever days are left to me belong to Him.

It is cheap demagoguery to suggest that anyone would want to send other people's sons to war. The only argument is with regard to the best way to avoid war. There is only one sure way -- surrender.

But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

I oppose federal aid to education because no one has been able to prove the need for it.

I don't feel that a family should cling to its young to the point that they're reluctant ever to leave the nest. Quite the contrary, I think the whole duty of parents is to bring their children up with a sense of values to the point where, with confidence, they can throw them out of the nest and start them on their way.

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin.
How do you tell an anti-Communist> It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended to him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music.

Secretary [of Education William] Bennett makes, I think, an interesting analogy. He says that if you server a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're likely to be given more money to do it with. Well, we've discovered that money alone isn't the answer.

The entire graduated income tax structure was created by Karl Marx. It has no justification in getting the government needed revenue.

Simple morality dictates that unless and until someone can prove the unborn human is not alive, we must give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it is. And, thus, it should be entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The battle against discrimination still goes on, and much remains to be done. But in a single generation, an entire nation recommitted itself to the cause of equal rights and used the force of law to ban, once and for all, racial bias in public education, in hiring and in the voting booth…
Nowhere does history offer a parallel to this vast undertaking. With all its flaws, America remains a unique achievement for human dignity on a scale unequaled anywhere in the world.