Enduring Quotes From Reagan's 'A Time For Choosing'

Fifty years ago this week, Ronald Reagan gave a speech on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

The televised address, entitled A Time for Choosing became an instant sensation and catapulted Reagan into the national spotlight. Today, the half-hour speech is widely considered to be among the 100 best speeches ever delivered.

Here are ten quotes from that landmark address that still endure:

"Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment."

"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."

"This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

"Perhaps there is a simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right."

"You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down."

"Was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents worth?"

"I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers."

"You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, 'There is a price we will not pay.' There is a point beyond which they must not advance. And this -- this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's 'peace through strength.'"

"I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as 'the masses.'"
"No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income."