The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom

by Ronald Reagan

  Bible Judges 9—Parable

  The Trees went forth to anoint a King over themselves. The olive tree, the fig tree, the vine—all declined to abandon their productive pursuits to become a King. So the trees then turned to the bramble and the bramble accepted.

  Dr. Goebbels

  Whoever can conquer the street will conquer the state one day for every form of power politics & any dictatorially run state has its roots in the street. We cannot have enough of public demonstrations for that is far & away the most emphatic way of demonstrating ones will to govern. It means a sight more than elec. statistics. When we can see our men thousands of them marching up & down the streets that is nothing short of mobilization for power.

  Judge Learned Hand

  There is nothing sinister in so arranging ones affairs as to keep taxes just as low as possible. Nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands. Taxes are enforced exactions not vol. contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.

  Anyone may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible, he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.

  J. Edgar Hoover

  The cure for crime is not the electric chair but the high chair.

  Paul McCracken

  It is interesting to speculate what would happen if a delegation from the Economic Dept. of U. of Outer Space were asked to fly around this planet & see if they could sort out the planned & unplanned economies. They would in fact probably get them sorted out; but they might as well have the labels on the 2 lists reversed. Of course the so-called unplanned economies aren’t unplanned at all. They rely on an extremely sophisticated system of planning reflected in the mechanisms of institutions of the market to organize ec. activity & to generate material progress.

  Prof. Geo. Sternlieb

  The billions of $ that are being spent on the urban poor by all levels of govt. go mainly to support a growing W.F. bureaucracy of teacher-aides, youth workers, clerks, supervisors, key punchers, & people’s lawyers. The bureauc. is sustained by the plight of the poor, the threat of the poor, the misery of the poor, but it yields little in the way of loaves & fishes to the poor.

  John Ramsay McCulloch, Scotch Ec., More—100 Years Ago

  The moment you abandon the cardinal principle of extracting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or their property you are at sea without rudder or compass & there is no amount of injustice or folly you may not commit.

  A Florida Bus Attendant—Ralph Bradford

  Human society is built & can only be built upon a foundation of citizenship accountability. The strength of a nation is not its legal machinery, but the moral stamina & courage of its people. The law is but the codification of their conscience. There are not enough laws & never will be, to keep a society stable if its members no longer will it. There are not enough policemen, courts, judges or prisons, nor ever can be to prevent the death of a civilization whose people no longer care. Law enforcement is for the criminal few; it collapses if it must be enforced against the many. When the sense of personal accountability is no longer present in majority strength, then no legal device known to man can hold the society together. Freedom is a timely torch blazing in the dark.

  Herbert Spencer, Essay, Self-Defense and Paternalism

  Of the pauper—the more you assist him the more he wants. Of the busy man the more he has to do the more he can do. A whole nation must be so—that just in proportion as its members are little helped by extraneous power they will become self helping and in proportion as they are much helped they will become helpless.

  Hiram Johnson, 1910, Los Angeles

  In our city we have drunk the dregs of the cup of infamy; we have been betrayed by pub. officials & sold out by those we trusted. But in our city we have never had anyone so vicious, so venomous, so putrescent or so vile as Harrison Gray Otis of the L.A. Times. The one blot on the escutcheon of L.A.—the bar sinister upon your city is Harrison Gray Otis of the L.A. Times. There he sits in senile dementia, with gangrene heart & rotting brain, grimacing at our every attempt at reform & chattering away in impotent rage while he goes down to his foul grave in snarling infamy.

  Will Rogers

  You are sentenced to prison as long as it’s made comfortable for you & your desire to remain. In checking out let the warden know, so he will know how many there will be for supper.

  Even when you make out a tax return on the level you don’t know if you are a crook or a martyr.

  Every time a lawyer writes something, he is not writing for posterity. He’s writing so endless others of his craft can make a living out of trying to figure out what he said. Course perhaps he hadn’t really said anything, that’s what makes it hard to explain.

  The minute you read something & you can’t understand it, you can be sure it was written by a lawyer. Then if you give it to another lawyer to read & he don’t know just what it means then you can be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer. If it’s in a few words and its plain & understandable only one way it was written by a non-lawyer.

  Norman Thomas

  Socialism is a scare word to many but it has a high degree of acceptance by people who hotly deny it. Nov. 21 1957, N.Y. Times (could be ’54).

  Thomas Jefferson

  I place economy among the 1st & most important virtues, & public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debt we must be taxed in our meat & drink, in our necessities & in our comforts, in our labor & amusements. If we can prevent the govt. from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

  Samuel Gompers

  Only resentment is aroused & the end is not gained. Only thru moral suasion & appeal to men’s reason can a movement succeed.

  Lord Macaulay to Hon. H. S. Randall—N.Y. (Grandson, Thom. Jeff.), May 23 1857

  As I said before, when society has entered on this downward progress either civilization or lib. must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of govt. with a strong hand, or your rep. will be fearfully plundered & laid waste by barbarians in the 20th century as the Roman emp. was in the 5th; with this diff., that the Huns & vandals who ravaged the Roman Emp. came from without & that your Huns & vandals will be engendered form within your country by your own institutions.

  Poem

  His horse went dead & his mule went lame,

  And he lost 6 cows in the poker game.

  Then a hurricane came on a summer’s day

  And blew the house where he lived away

  An earthquake came when that was gone

  And swallowed the land the house stood on

  And then the tax collector came around

  & charged him up with the hole in the ground.

  ON RELIGION

  Whittaker Chambers

  My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear. Those intricate perfect ears the thought passed through my mind—no those ears were not (as the comms. say) created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature. I didn’t know it at the time but God had laid his finger on my forehead.

  Thomas Jefferson

  The God who gave us life gave us liberty—can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?

  George Washington

  Despair my fellow countrymen of ever teaching citizenship save on the basis of immorality & abandon all hope of teaching morality on any other foundation than religion for the nation that forgot God has never been allowed to endure.

  Patrick Henry

  Perfect freedom is necessary to the health & vigor of both commerce & citizenship & both will have freedom concurrently or neither will have it at all.

  We have it within our power to begin the world over again.

  Those who expect to reap the
blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.

  I have no light to illuminate the pathway of the future save that which falls over my shoulder from the past.

  John Dickinson, Signer, Declaration of Independence

  It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children, but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. We have counted the cost of this content & we find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.

  Abe Lincoln

  I should be the most presumptuous blockhead upon this footstool if I for one day thought that I could discharge the duties which have come upon me, since I came to this place, without the aid & enlightenment of one who is stronger & wiser than all others.

  Antigone to the Legislature: Sophocles

  You who are mortal cannot change the infallible, unwritten laws of heaven They did not begin today or yesterday, but they are everlasting & none can tell the hour that saw their birth. I would not from fear of any human edict, incur the God-inflicted penalty of disobeying divine law.

  William Penn

  If men will not be governed by God (that is to be honest, truthful, diligent, fair & just to all) then they must be governed by tyrants.

  Numbers 6:24–26

  The Lord bless thee & keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee & be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee & give thee peace.

  Commandments

  Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart & with all thy soul & with all thy mind—this is the 1st & great commandment. (& the 2nd is like unto it).

  Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these 2 commandments, hang all the law & the prophets.

  Irish Blessing

  May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rain fall soft upon your fields & until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

  The Rangers Prayer

  Oh God whose end is justice, Whose strength is all our stay, Be near & bless my mission as I go forth today. Let wisdom guide my actions, let courage fill my heart and help me, Lord, in every hour to do a Ranger’s part. Protect when danger threatens, sustain when trails are rough; help me to keep my standard high and smile at each rebuff. When might comes down upon me, I pray thee, Lord, be nigh, whether lonely scout, or camped, under the Texas sky. Keep me, oh God, in life and when my days shall end, forgive my sins and take me in, For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

  High Flight—John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

  Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

  And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

  Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

  Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things

  You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

  High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

  I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

  My eager craft through footless halls of airs. . . .

  Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

  I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,

  Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;

  And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

  The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

  Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

  (Written by a 19-year-old American volunteer with the Royal Canadian Air Force, who was killed in training December 11, 1941)

  Anonymous

  You cannot pray the Lord’s prayer & even once say ‘I,’

  You cannot pray the Lord’s prayer & even once say ‘my’

  You cannot pray the Lord’s prayer & not include another;

  You cannot ask for daily bread & not include your brother.

  For others are included in each & every plea;

  From the very beginning it never once says me.

  [Unknown, Christian Reader, Vol. 32, No. 3]

  Isaiah 1:18

  Come let us reason together.

  Isaiah 19:20

  If ye be willing ye shall eat the good of the land—but if ye refuse & rebel—ye shall be devoured with the sword. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

  Thomas Jefferson Prior to Writing Dec. of Independence, Inscribed on Jefferson Memorial, Wash. D.C.

  The God who gave us life gave us lib. Can the libs. of a nat. be secure when we have removed a conviction that these libs. are the gift of God?

  1962—St. N.Y. Proposed Prayer for Its Schools

  Almighty God we acknowledge our dependence on thee and we beg thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers & our country.—U.S. Supreme Ct. Ruled it Unconst.

  THE WORLD

  Sen. Fulbright

  It is possible that if Mao Tse Tung & Ho Chi Minh had not borne the title of Communist but otherwise had done exactly what they have done in their 2 countries, we would have accepted their victories over their domestic rivals & lived with them in peace.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Letter to John Jay Urging a Strong Navy & Prompt Retailiation Against Any Aggressor Seizing or Harassing U.S. Shipping:

  Speedy retaliation was necessary because an insult unanswered is the parent of many others.”

  RR’s Wisdom

  The path of history is littered with the bones of dead empires. If we are to follow we will have no decades or centuries for leisurely decay & disintegration. The enemy at our gates is combat lean & hard. Hungry for all we’ve created.

  Winston Churchill

  On the Day After Munich 1938—All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the 1st sip, the 1st foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor we ride again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

  Cicero

  We are taxed in our bread & wine—in our income & our investments—on our land & property—not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of men—for foreign nations who bow to us & accept our largesse—& promise to assist in keeping the power—these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness—or when the treasury is bare—& surely it is becoming bare—were they bound to us by ties of love they would not ask for our gold—they hate & despise us—& who shall say we are worthy of more.

  Book Uncommon Sense by James McGregor Burns

  The way in which Ams. live, the quality of Am. life is the most important aspect of Am. foreign policy today. The Democratic & above all the open way in which we have faced our social & economic problems has been the most impressive & influential aspect of Am. foreign policy not only in dealing with the Soviet U. but in our relations with other peoples in the world. This has little to do with Am. security—it has much to do with the moral worth of the Am. Svc. & the standards it could set for the world . . . The Am. declaration of independence is cited & copied throughout the emerging countries. Its precepts have proved contagious. At the very least Am. world leadership should so act as not to dishonor the ideas it has given to the world; at the most, it should act so as to help make them a reality. But paradoxically this cannot be forced upon others; each people must make its own independence, achieve its own liberty & equality.

  Israeli Scientist

  Those nat’s. which have put liberty ahead of equality have ended up doing better by equality than those with the reverse principles.

  Vladimir Lenin

  As long as capitalism & socialism exist we cannot live in peace. Socialists without ceasing to be socialists cannot oppose any kind of war.

  To tie one’s hands in advance & to openly tell an enemy who is presently armed that we will fight him & when is stupidity.

  Andrei Gromyko “Foreign Policy—Soviet Union” 1975

  The communist party subordinates all its theoretical & practical activity in the sphere of international relati
ons to the task of strengthening the positions of socialism & in the interests of further developing & deepening the world revolutionary process.