"Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
"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."
“We’ve been trying to follow the advice of Mark Twain, which was, ‘Do what’s right and you’ll please some of the people and astound the rest'.”
"We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as his strength and ability will take him…. But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure.”
"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program."
“Lately, I’ve been heartened to remember that Moses was 80 when God commissioned him for public service and he lived to be 120. And Abraham was 100 and his wife, Sarah, 90, when they did something truly amazing. He survived to be 175. So, Mr. Prime Minister, we haven’t even hit our full stride yet.”
"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose."
"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."
"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."
"Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right."
"History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."
"Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things."
"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."
"We the people" tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. "
"We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life."
"The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being."
"Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."
"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so."
"Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is."
"Honey, I forgot to duck."
(To his wife, Nancy, while in hospital shortly after he was shot in an assassination attempt.)
"The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take a civil service exam."
"People don't start wars, governments do."
"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."
"Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders."
"One picture is worth 1,000 denials."
"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect."
"We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent."
"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."
"Trust, but verify."
"We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child."
"We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule."
"The 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."
"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting."
"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
"I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born."
"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."
"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."
"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."
"Don't be afraid to see what you see."
"All great change in America begins at the dinner table."
"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting."
"If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth."
"We the people" tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us."
"We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain."
"With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there's one individual who's not being considered at all. That's the one who is being aborted."
"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
"If a tax hike makes it to my desk, I'll veto it in less time than it takes Vanna White to turn the letters V-E-T-O!"
