While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.

No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.

I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use....

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

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.

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.

The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension… would include also...

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Violence has been Nicaragua’s most important export to the world.

In the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy as a prisoner’s chains.

Apart from earning an awful lot of money, why would you go to Hollywood?

Within the covers of the Bible are all the answers for all the problems men face.

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.

A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties.

I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.

We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.

The sergeant is the Army.

May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

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.

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping...

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to...

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.

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

You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we’re in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we’ve got to...

I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem — and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

It is not strange… to mistake change for progress.

There are no easy answers’ but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

I like the noise of democracy.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.