HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRESIDENT REAGAN

“[Ronald Reagan] believed that people were the most important resource and that our natural resources should be used in ways that would benefit mankind. Ronald Reagan knew that a growing economy and an improving environment would go hand-in-hand. He understood the absolute necessity of employing sound science to management of natural resources and environmental standards. He rejected the Socialist view of environmental management and the regulatory scheme of ‘one size fits all’ regulations. He supported the principle of federalism in environmental management and was strongly committed to the principle of protection of property rights. And Reagan knew that environmental policies that emanate from liberty are the most successful.” —Becky Norton Dunlop

“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?” —Ronald Reagan

“Tuesday would have been Ronald Reagan’s 96th birthday, which is amazing when you consider he is, in a way, more with us than ever: his memory and meaning summoned in political conversation, his name evoked by candidates. I remember 10 years ago when there was controversy over the movement to name things for him—buildings and airports. I was away from home at the time, and I realized that to talk to people in Washington about it, I’d have to land at JFK, take the FDR Drive and go through the Lincoln tunnel. This is America; we remember our greats. You tell yourself who you are by what you raise a statue to... It’s part of why when you next fly to Washington, you’ll land at Reagan National Airport.” —Peggy Noonan

There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation. -- Ronald Reagan

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing. -- Ronald Reagan

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. -- Ronald Reagan

“So now we declare ‘war on poverty’... Now, do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add $1 billion to the $45 million we are spending... one more program to the 30-odd we have—and remember, this new program doesn’t replace any, it just duplicates existing programs—do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic?... Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always ‘against’ things, never ‘for’ anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.” —Ronald Reagan