Looking for inspirational quotes by US President Ronald Reagan? I’ve rounded up the best collection of Ronald Reagan quotes, sayings, writings, speeches, and lines (with images and pictures) to inspire you about life, government, leadership, freedom, success, and more.
Ronald Wilson Reagan, originally an American actor and politician, served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
He was the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Reagan was the president of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1947 to 1952 and again from 1959 to 1960.
Also See: Theodre Roosevelt Quotes
The only movie actor ever to become president, he had a remarkable skill as an orator that earned him the title “the Great Communicator.”
In 1957, Reagan won a Hollywood Citizenship Award, which was a special Golden Globe Award.
His policies have been credited with contributing to the demise of Soviet communism.
Reagan still remains one of the most popular presidents in American history because of his optimism for the country and his humor.
Reagan’s quotes are deep and insightful and some are funny with a pinch of sarcasm on government, freedom, socialism, and democracy.
Top 10 Ronald Reagan Quotes
- “Trust, but verify.” – Ronald Reagan
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- “Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.” – Ronald Reagan
- “We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.” – Ronald Reagan
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- “When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” – Ronald Reagan
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- “It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?” – Ronald Reagan
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- “Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.” – Ronald Reagan
- “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” – Ronald Reagan
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- “Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.” – Ronald Reagan
- “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” ― Ronald Reagan
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- “Education is not the means of showing people how to get what they want. Education is an exercise by means of which enough men, it is hoped, will learn to want what is worth having.” – Ronald Reagan
Famous Quotes By Ronald Reagan
- “Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in.’” – Ronald Reagan
- “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.” – Ronald Reagan
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- “I did turn 75 today – but remember, that’s only 24 Celsius.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver 5 minutes longer.” ― Ronald Reagan
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- “Even Albert Einstein reportedly needed help on his 1040 form.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God.” ― Ronald Reagan
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- “Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.” – Ronald Reagan
- “My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.” – Ronald Reagan
- “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” – Ronald Reagan
- “The taxpayer: That’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.” – Ronald Reagan
- “A recession is when a neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.” – Ronald Reagan
- “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth.” – Ronald Reagan
- “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.” – Ronald Reagan
- “If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.” – Ronald Reagan
- “You know, it has been said that politics is the second oldest profession and I’ve come to realize over the last few years, it bears a great similarity to the first.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Whatever history may say of me when I’m gone, I hope it will say that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidences rather than your doubts.” – Ronald Reagan
- “How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” – Ronald Reagan
- “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.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” – Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan Quotes On Leadership & Freedom
- “Don’t be afraid to see what you see.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things.” – Ronald Reagan
- “The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.” – Ronald Reagan
- “There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.” – Ronald Reagan
- “My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose. Somehow we win out.” – Ronald Reagan
- “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” – Ronald Reagan
- “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” – Ronald Reagan
- “The struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.” – Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan Quotes From The Reagan Diaries
- “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” – Ronald Reagan
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- “I spoke to ears that refused to hear.” – Ronald Reagan
- “How can a president not be an actor?” – Ronald Reagan
- “Officially signed off on position I took a few.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Tax increases don’t eliminate deficits they increase govt. spending.” – Ronald Reagan
- “N.S.C. briefing. Castro is very nervous. We’ll try to keep him that way.” – Ronald Reagan
- “But Nancy is right—Presidents don’t have vacations—they just have a change of scenery”;” – Ronald Reagan
- “Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.” – Ronald Reagan
- “We do more for the under developed nations than anyone in the world but they act as if we’re out to destroy them and they never say boo to the Soviets.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Big Cabinet meeting on our program through Justice dept. to wipe out legal discriminations against women. We’ve changed 27 laws, have 60 more in process & today approved some more.” – Ronald Reagan
- “the Polish people be allowed to have a voice in the kind of govt. they want. Under the Yalta Pact the Soviets agreed they & others would be allowed to do this. The Soviets have never honored that promise.” – Ronald Reagan
- “The press is dying to paint me as now trying to undo the New Deal. I remind them I voted for F.D.R. 4 times. I’m trying to undo the “Great Society.” It was L.B.J.’s war on poverty that led to our present mess.” – Ronald Reagan
- “One thing was unusual and very humbling; the streets were lined with people as if for a parade all the way to the Waldorf. They cheered & clapped and I wore my arms out waving back to them. I keep thinking this can’t continue and yet their warmth & affection seems so genuine I get a lump in my throat. I pray constantly that I won’t let them down.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Tuesday, March 3 [Meetings with economist Arthur Burns regarding China, and with President Ford on economy; message from Pope John Paul II expressing general greetings; VFW reception for Senator Laxalt (R-NV); dinner party.] During day I did a 1 hr. interview with Walter Cronkite—his last for CBS. He spent the 1st 20 min’s. on El Salvador. He didn’t throw any slow balls but the reaction was favorable. Because of our dinner we couldn’t watch the show but I was treated to another W.H. service. They taped the program & played it back to us later in the evening.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I walked into the emergency room and was hoisted onto a cart where I was stripped of my clothes. It was then we learned I’d been shot & had a bullet in my lung. Getting shot hurts. Still my fear was growing because no matter how hard I tried to breathe it seemed I was getting less & less air. I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed. But I realized I couldn’t ask for Gods help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed up young man who had shot me. Isn’t that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all Gods children & therefore equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold.” – Ronald Reagan
Best Ronald Reagan Quotes About Government
- “As government expands, liberty contracts.” ― Ronald Reagan
- “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” – Ronald Reagan
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- “They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.” – Ronald Reagan
- “If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be one nation gone under.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Balancing the budget is a little like protecting your virtue: You just have to learn to say “no.”” – Ronald Reagan
- “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I used to say that politics was the second-oldest profession. I have come to know that it bears a gross similarity to the first.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.” – Ronald Reagan
- “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.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” – Ronald Reagan
- “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.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” – Ronald Reagan
- “One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.” – Ronald Reagan
Life Facts of President Ronald Reagan
Born: 6 February 1911, Tampico, Illinois, United States
Died: 5 June 2004, Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, United States
Presidential term: 20 January 1981 – 20 January 1989
Spouse: Nancy Reagan (m. 1952–2004), Jane Wyman (m. 1940–1949)
Children: Ron Reagan, Patti Davis, Michael Reagan, Maureen Reagan, Christine Reagan
Party: Republican Party
Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan had a successful career in Hollywood. He was in fifty-three movies.
Ronald Reagan was in fifty-three movies. His first screen credit was the starring role in the 1937 movie Love Is on the Air.
He then starred in many movies such as Dark Victory with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Before the movie Santa Fe Trail with Errol Flynn in 1940, he played the role of George “The Gipper” Gipp in the movie Knute Rockne, All American.
From his role in the movie, he got the lifelong nickname “the Gipper”. In 1941, experts voted him the fifth most popular star from the younger generation in Hollywood.
He married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. They had three children. They divorced in 1949. Reagan then married Nancy Davis in 1952. They had two children. Their marriage lasted until Reagan died in 2004.
Reagan was originally a Democrat. In 1962 he changed to the Republican party. He is ranked high in presidential opinion polls.
Reagan was also a spokesperson. He hosted the General Electric Theater since it was first shown in 1953. He was fired in 1962.
Reagan died on June 5, 2004, at his Bel Air, Los Angeles home from pneumonia after a ten-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 93 years old.
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