Here are some of Reagan

Here are some of Reagan's finest:

"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."

"We have to keep in mind we are a nation under God, and if we ever forget that, we'll be just a nation under."

"Sometimes when I'm faced with an unbeliever, an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook."

"Let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in their totalitarian darkness -- pray that they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the locus of evil in the modern world."

"How can the leadership of the other side... open each session of their great convention with an injunction to the Lord, and end each session with a prayer to God, and still insist on denying that right to a child in a public school?"

"[W]e will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God."

"We were all revolutionaries, and the revolution has been a success."

"Families must continue to be the foundation of our nation. Families -- not government programs -- are the best way to make sure our children are properly nurtured, our elderly are cared for, our cultural and spiritual heritages are perpetuated, our laws are observed and our values are preserved. Thus it is imperative that our government's programs, actions, officials and social welfare institutions never be allowed to jeopardize the family. We fear the government may be powerful enough to destroy our families; we know that it is not powerful enough to replace them. The New Republican Party must be committed to working always in the interest of the American family."

"Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio."

"When... our allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy forty years ago they came not as conquerors, but as liberators. When these troops swept across the French countryside and into the forest of Belgium and Luxembourg they came not to take, but to return what had been wrongly seized. When our forces marched into Germany, they came not to prey on a brave and defeated people, but to nurture the seeds of democracy among those who yearned to be free again. We salute them today... Today in their memory, and for all who fought here, we celebrate the triumph of democracy. ... We sought to bring all freedom-loving nations together in a community dedicated to the defense and preservation of our sacred values. Our alliance, forged in the crucible of war, tempered and shaped by the realities of the postwar world, has succeeded. In Europe, the threat has been contained, the peace has been kept. Today the living here assembled -- officials, veterans, citizens -- are a tribute to what was achieved here forty years ago. This land is secure. We are free. These things are worth fighting and dying for... We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free." --6 June 1984, Omaha Beach, Normandy, France

"And I hope that someday your children and grandchildren will tell of the time that a certain president came to town at the end of a long journey and asked their parents and grandparents to join him in setting America on the course to the new millennium -- and that a century of peace, prosperity, opportunity, and hope followed. So, if I could ask you just one last time: Tomorrow, when mountains greet the dawn, would you go out there and win one for the Gipper?"

"Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."

"Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them."

"Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself."

"Are you entitled to the fruits of your own labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?"

"The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution."

"The best view of big government is in the rearview mirror as you're driving away from it."

"We were poor when I was young, but the difference then was that the government didn't come around telling you you were poor."

"To those who cite the First Amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions every day, I say: The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny." "I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course... This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or a right. There is only an up or down: up to man's age-old dream -- the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course." "We kept faith with a promise as old as this land we love and as big as the sky, a brilliant vision of America as a shining city on a hill. Thanks to all of you, and with God's help, America's greatest chapter is still to be written, for the best is yet to come." "[I]n all that time I won a nickname, the 'Great Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries. They called it the Reagan Revolution. Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed like the Great Rediscovery -- a rediscovery of our values and our common sense."

"Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead we changed a world." "There's no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit."

"The future belongs to the free."

"We defend freedom here or it is gone."

"To those who are fainthearted and unsure, I have this message: If you're afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again."

"Trust but verify."

"Who can forget those so-called 'experts' who said our military buildup threatened a dangerous escalation of tensions? What kind of fool, they asked, would call the Soviet Union an 'Evil Empire'?"

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

"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 civic ritual."

"The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith."

"I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."

"Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

"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."

"All great change in America begins at the dinner table."

"The march of freedom and democracy ... will leave Marxism-Leninism on 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 -- the 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." "If children prayed together, would they not understand what they have in common, and would this not, indeed, bring them closer, and is this not to be desired? So, I submit to you that those who claim to be fighting for tolerance on this issue may not be tolerant at all. When John Kennedy was running for President in 1960, he said that his church would not dictate his Presidency any more than he would speak for his church. Just so, and proper. But John Kennedy was speaking in an America in which the role of religion -- and by that I mean the role of all churches -- was secure. Abortion was not a political issue. Prayer was not a political issue. The right of church schools to operate was not a political issue. And it was broadly acknowledged that religious leaders had a right and a duty to speak out on the issues of the day. They held a place of respect, and a politician who spoke to or of them with a lack of respect would not long survive in the political arena. It was acknowledged then that religion held a special place, occupied a special territory in the hearts of the citizenry. The climate has changed greatly since then. And since it has, it logically follows that religion needs defenders against those who care only for the interests of the state. ... The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the state; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the state. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims. We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions. I submit to you that the tolerant society is open to and encouraging of all religions. And this does not weaken us; it strengthens us. ... You know, if we look back through history to all those great civilizations, those great nations that rose up to even world dominance and then deteriorated, declined, and fell, we find they all had one thing in common. One of the significant forerunners of their fall was their turning away from their God. ... Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." --Prayer Breakfast, 1984

"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement..."

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

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

"Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'."

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

"If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made."

"Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his."

"It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?"

"I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me...even if it's in the middle of a cabinet meeting."

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

"I will not exploit my opponent's youth and inexperience."

"And I also remember something that Thomas Jefferson once said: 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that..."

"History's no easy subject. Even in my day it wasn't, and we had so much less of it to learn then."

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program."

"I heard one presidential candidate say that what this country needed was a president for the nineties. I was set to run again. I thought he said a president IN his nineties."

"When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well, ladies and gentlemen, I'd follow the example of their nominee [Bill Clinton]: don't inhale."

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. ... And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home. We've done our part. And as I walk into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time, we made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad. Not bad at all. And so, good-bye. God bless you, and God bless the United State of America." --Farewell Speech from the Oval Office, 1989

"When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead."

"There are a great many God-fearing, dedicated, noble men and women in public life, present company included. And yes, we need your help to keep us ever-mindful of the ideas and the principles that brought us into the public arena in the first place. The basis of those ideals and principles is a commitment to freedom and personal liberty that, itself is grounded in the much deeper realization that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted. The American experiment in democracy rests on this insight. Its discovery was the great triumph of our Founding Fathers, voiced by William Penn when he said: 'If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants'."

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"I know in my heart that man is good.
That what is right will always eventually triumph.
And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

(spoken at the 1991 Reagan Library dedication,
and inscribed at his grave site)