Posted on 07/18/2005 10:13:36 AM PDT by ZULU
Here's another good one:
"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. "
"Well, there you go."
"I've been in office an entire week now and haven't started one single nuclear war,"
Why Teddy? He was a budding socialist and I think he had a screw looose.
"I know they say hard work never killed anyone, but I figure, why take the chance?" - Reagan at a Gridiron Club dinner
Reagan bumper sticker: "America is Too Great for Small Dreams"
I thought that was simply a new phenomenon.
What was the quote of RR right before/after a weekly radio address when he didn't know the mike was still on?
"Mr. Gorbachev, the bombing starts in 5 minutes" or something like that.
That made my day.
bookmark
"I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day." —March 13, 1985, in a speech threatening to veto legislation raising taxes.
???????????????????
Read "The Rise of Teddy Roosevelt" and "Theodore Rex."
Teddy Roosevelt was a scholar, a zoologist, a hunter and outdoorsman, a historian, the founder of the National Park System, the man who engineered the Spanish American War, a soldier, a patriot, a good shot with a gun, a cowboy, a New York Ciy Police Commissioner who cleaned up corruption, a man who warred against the Robber Barons, an author, Secretary of the U.S. Navy, the man who brought the United Navy into the Modern World, a boxer and martial arts expert, a horseman, a patriot, a devoted and loving husband and son, I could on and on and on.
Read about him. He was an amazing guy.
One of Reagan’s favorite joke:
Worried that their son was too optimistic, the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. Trying to dampen the boy’s spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a room piled high with nothing but horse manure. Yet instead of displaying distaste, the little boy clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to all fours, and began digging.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked.
“With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere.”
A precious moment in Reagan's life that I think touched the heart of God:
June 06, 2004, 3:31 p.m.
Between Him and the Kids
Passing up the perfect photo-op.
By Peter Robinson
EDITOR'S NOTE: This vignette is excerpted from How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life.
The incident I always considered the best illustration of Reagan's regard for ordinary individuals took place in a North Carolina parking lot. "It was during the 1976 primary fight," says Dana Rohrabacher, who then worked on the Reagan campaign as an assistant press secretary. "We were getting ready for a rally in this gigantic parking lot at a shopping mall. I was in the staging area behind the podium, and a lady called me over to the side and said, 'I've got a group of blind kids here. Since they can't see him, I was wondering if you could have Governor Reagan come over and tell them hello.'"
Dana passed the request on to Mike Deaver, and Reagan, who was standing nearby, overheard. "He said he'd do it, but he didn't want any photographers," Dana explains. "Can you imagine that? He was in the middle of a presidential campaign, and the press would have gone wild for a photo of him with a group of blind kids. But Reagan wanted this to be between him and the kids."
Deaver came up with a plan. When the speech ended, Deaver told Dana, he'd begin walking Reagan back to the campaign bus. Concluding that the candidate was about to leave for the next event, all the reporters and photographers would hurry back to their own buses. And then, when the press had cleared out, Deaver would double back with Reagan, returning the candidate to the area behind the podium, where Reagan would meet the blind children.
"It worked," Dana says. "The press guys all went back to their buses, and I brought the lady with the blind kids back behind the podium. There were six or seven kids, real sweet little kids about eight or nine or ten years old. Since there was a lot of background noise — Reagan bent down, close to the kids, to talk to them. But somehow I could see him thinking that that wasn't enough. So after the kids had asked him a couple of questions, he said, 'Well, now I have a question for you. Would you like to touch my face so you can get a better understanding of how I look?' The kids all smiled and said yes, so Reagan just leaned over into them, and one by one these little kids began moving their fingers over his face to see what he looked like.
"The only picture of that scene is the picture in my mind," Dana says. "But I can still see those kids, touching Ronald Reagan's face and smiling these really big smiles."
"The Declaration of Independence," G. K. Chesterton writes, "dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; it is right [to do so].... There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." Although in nearly every way you could ever imagine, in other words, we humans are not equal but unequal — some rich and some poor, some bright and some dull, some healthy and some sick — in one way we enjoy perfect equality all the same. Did the 40th chief executive ever read Chesterton? I can't say. Yet Ronald Reagan demonstrated an implicit belief in the sacred and equal importance of all men as children of God.
He was a real man.
I read "When Character was King".
Unfortunately, a man like him comes along all too infrequently. We all miss him very much.
There was the joke he told Gorbachev at Rejavik:
A Russian goes into the automobile dealership to buy a car. He makes the deal and the dealer says, "Your new Zil will be ready for you to pickup in 10 years from today." The Russian says, "OK," and starts to leave. He turns around and asks, "Will that be morning or afternoon?" The dealer says, "It's 10 years from today, whats the difference between morning and afternoon." The Russian says, "The plumber is coming in the morning."
"A Hippie is someone who walks like Tarzan, dresses like Jane and smells like Cheetah." R. W. Reagan
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