Ronald Reagan Quotes on Liberty & Freedom (22 Quotes)

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow men.

I made a speech by that title A Time for Choosing in 1964. I said, We've been told increasingly that we must choose between left or right. But we're still using those terms -- left or right. And I'll repeat what I said then in '64. There is no left or right. There's only an up or down up to the ultimate in individual freedom, consistent with an orderly society -- or down to the totalitarianism of the ant heap. And those today who, however good their intentions, tell us that we should trade freedom for security are on that downward path.

There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. . . . If we lose freedom here in America, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.

I oppose registration for the draft . . . because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom.

I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer, just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals . . . The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

the Berlin Wall came down, the Evil Empire collapsed, and the cause of liberty prevailed in the world.

In an atmosphere of liberty, artists and patrons are free to think the unthinkable and create the audacious they are free to make both horrendous mistakes and glorious celebrations.

Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.

Why should we be frightened No people who have ever lived on this earth have fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom, or done more to advance the dignity of man than the living Americans, those Americans living in this land today.

The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization. The West will not contain Communism it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.

In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind -- too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. . . . East and West do not distrust each other because we are armed we are armed because we distrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. . . . The most fundamental distinction of all between East and West (sic.) is that the totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront.

The march of freedom and democracy . . . will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.

Let us resolve that we will stop spreading dependency and start spreading opportunity that we will stop spreading bondage and start spreading freedom.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy accommodation. And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. . . . We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave-masters.

Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom. What brought America back The American people brought us back -- with quiet courage and common sense with undying faith that in this nation under God the future will be ours, for the future belongs to the free.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars It is better to be here in Europe ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

I, in my own mind, have always thought of America as a place in the divine scheme of things that was set aside as a promised land. It was set here and the price of admission was very simple the means of selection was very simple as to how this land should be populated. Any place in the world and any person from those places any person with the courage, with the desire to tear up their roots, to strive for freedom, to attempt and dare to live in a strange and foreign place, to travel halfway across the world was welcome here.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Peace is more than just the absence of war. True peace is justice, true peace is freedom. And true peace dictates the recognition of human rights.

They have answered the stirrings of liberty with brute force, killings, mass arrests, and the setting up of concentration camps.