... A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup. It would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United States and allied defenses and would leave our aging forces increasingly vulnerable. And an honest freeze would require extensive prior negotiations on the systems and numbers to be limited and on the measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the kind of a freeze that has been suggested would be virtually impossible to verify. Such a major effort would divert us completely from our current negotiations on achieving substantial reductions. Ronald Reagan, speech 8th March 1983
The United States does not start fights. ibid.
It is time for us to start a build-up, a rebuilding of the military might of America. ibid.
I call upon the scientific community [sic] 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 obsolete. ibid.
Let me share with you a vision of the future that offers hope. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive. ibid.
This fellow [Clinton] they’ve nominated claims he’s the new Thomas Jefferson. Well, let me tell you something. I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine. And governor, you’re no Thomas Jefferson. Ronald Reagan, 1992 Republican National Convention
Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do. Ronald Reagan, 1981
Trees: how many of ’em do we need to look at? Ronald Reagan, attributed
Trust but verify. Ronald Reagan
Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx. Ronald Reagan
Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders. Ronald Reagan
We are especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich. Ronald Reagan, speech following hijack of US plane 8th July 1985
We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. Ronald Reagan
We did not – repeat did not – trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Nor will we. Ronald Reagan, address to nation November 1986
We have had nothing to do with other countries and their shipment of arms. Ronald Reagan, news conference 19th November 1986
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
We’re going forward with research on a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two hours. Ronald Reagan, State of the Union address 1986
We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. Ronald Reagan, TV speech 27th October 1964
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’. Ronald Reagan, broadcast following loss of space shuttle Challenger 28th January 1986
What if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened from a power from outer space from another planet? Wouldn’t we all of a sudden find that we didn’t have any differences between us at all? Ronald Reagan
Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face. Ronald Reagan
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. Ronald Reagan
You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans. Ronald Reagan, The New York Times 15th January 1981
If you are a casual drug user, you are an accomplice to murder. Nancy Reagan
Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy. James David Barber
In the Reagan years, more federal debt was added than in the entire prior history of the United States. Richard Darman
I have nothing to say to him [Reagan], because he is mad. He is foolish. He is an Israeli dog. Muammar Gaddafi, 20th June 1986
This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor. Mark Green Reagan’s Reign of Error
From day one his standard operating procedure ... was a blend of ignorance, amnesia, and dissembling. Like a panicky passenger lunging for a life preserver, he would, under stress, concoct almost any fact or anecdote to advance his ideological beliefs. ibid.
During Mr Reagan’s trip to Europe ... members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times – during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope – that they privately christened the trip the Big Sleep. Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency
Ronald Reagan is a fraud. Christopher Hitchens, interview The Nation
Under President Reagan illegal money was raised from drugs and from the sale of illegal weapons and the trading in human lives ... And Reagan was president of that secret government ... He was a regular habitual liar. And as for the economy, we are still living with his deficit. Christopher Hitchens, interview The Nation
The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn’t like him all that much. He met his second wife – the one that you remember – because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see. Year in and year out in Washington, I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon. Christopher Hitchens
The Reagan period was a failure: I mean there was smoke and mirrors and that was about it … an illusion, a period of fraud. Christopher Hitchens, interview CSpan 1992, Youtube 1.25.40
The official crimewave that’s taken place under the Bush/Reagan administration: there are a number of enquiries into the remnants of the Iran/Contra connection, into the increasingly sinister Iraq-gate ramifications, into BNL, into BCCI, into some bad savings and loans connections … Christopher Hitchens on Bill & Hillary Clinton, Saudi Arabia and the War Economy, interview CSpan 1992, Youtube 1.25.40
Reagan’s only contribution [to the subject of the MX missile] throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he’d watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution. Lee Hamilton, Indiana
Reagan, who more than any president in history railed against government benefits and spending, set the standard for all members of his administration. In addition to his presidential pension of $99,500 a year for life and his annual pension as a former governor of California of $30,800 ... he received Secret Service protection from forty full-time agents and other security at a cost to the government estimated at $10 million annually, more than double that of other living presidents. A suite of offices atop a new thirty-four-storey office building twenty minutes from his home, commanding a view that extended from the Pacific Ocean to the towers of downtown Los Angeles, cost the government $173,000 a year to lease. Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History