Ronald Reagan Quotes

Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better.

As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking—this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity.

It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed.

The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.

In a world of democracies, in a world where the great projects that have set humanity on fire are the projects of the emancipation of individuals from entrenched social division and hierarchy; in such a world individuals must never be puppets or prisoners of the societies or cultures into which they have been born.

Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.

A necessary corollary of giving individuals freedom to choose how to conduct their lives is acceptance of the fact that different individuals will make different choices.

The genius of a free society is that its citizens have wide scope to pursue their own visions of the good without excessive hindrance by their fellow citizens.

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.

our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas.

I believe everybody got the right to live their own life the way they want to.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.

[People] don't like the government telling them what to do or telling them how to live their lives.

We’re not so free that we don’t have to listen to rules, and laws, and regulations. Those are important. But the spirit, the freedom of the spirit, that’s what I think of American Dream, that we are free here to do what we want to do, what we set out to do.

Whatever the issue, let freedom offer us a hundred choices, instead of having government force one answer on everyone.

My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility

The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.

I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

Liberty is always freedom from the government.

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.

No government on earth can make men, who have realized freedom in their hearts, salute against their will.

Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being.