One for the Gipper

Former President Ronald Reagan died after a long struggle with Alzheimers disease. Click on the title for a link to the full story.

I'm not going to go into politics. I am genuinely choked up to hear of his death. I firmly believe that he was a good man and a good President. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, in particular his wife Nancy, the love of his life. She was very protective of him during the last ten years since he announced the onset of the disease. Theirs is one of the great love stories of our time.

The following is from the BBC's reports.

Ronald Reagan: In his own words The former US president Ronald Reagan was sometimes known by his soubriquet the Great Communicator.
Over his career he was renowned for telling jokes, summing up issues with memorable lines, and making the odd gaffe.

Here is a selection of his quotes:


Government is not the solution, it's the problem.
Inaugural address, 20 January, 1981

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. 1986

A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.
1988

Honey, I forgot to duck. To wife Nancy Reagan in the emergency room after being shot, 30 March, 1981

I hope you're all Republicans. To surgeons as he went into the operating theatre


When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well, ladies and gentlemen, I'd follow the example of their nominee: don't inhale. A reference to Bill Clinton at the Republican National Convention, 1992

I've noticed that everybody who is for abortion has already been born. 1980

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin. 1987

My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. A joke, not realising a microphone was on, 1984

I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

The other day someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket. 1986.

If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate ... open this gate ... tear down this wall. At the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, addressing a speech to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, June 1987


We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free
On the 40th anniversary of the Normandy landings, 6 June, 1984

She's the best man in England. On former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher

If I ache, it's because we are apart and yet that can't be because you are inside and a part of me, so we really aren't apart at all. Yet I ache but wouldn't be without the ache, because that would mean being without you and that I can't be because I love you. A letter to Nancy in 1963, quoted in her 2000 book I Love You, Ronnie

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Announcing his Alzheimer's disease, 5 November, 1994

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/3780871.stm