His Own Words

 

Ronald Reagan

The following statements have been gathered from Ronald Reagan’s speeches. These comments have been compiled by The Federalist.

We defend freedom here or it is gone.

Trust but verify.

If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civil ritual.

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

Regulations are like spores of a fungus—they settle anywhere and everywhere and create more spores.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.

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.

Communism is neither an economic or a political system—it is a form of insanity—a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears.

The West won’t contain Communism. It will transcend it. It will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.

The march of freedom and democracy . . . will leave Marxism-Leninism in the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.

There’s no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying I am an American.

Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter—and they’re on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs—with faith in themselves and faith in an idea—who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. They’re individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art and education. Their patriotism is quiet but deep. Their values sustain our national life.

Those who created our country—Founding Fathers and Mothers—understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form of moral order and felt that the bedrock of moral order is religion. . . . The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.     Ω