Society and the World

[ To the surgeons about to operate on him after he was shot by John Hinckley :] Please tell me you’re Republicans.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . . We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it, and still be home for Christmas.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I did say something in our negotiations in Iceland in Russian: Dovorey no provorey . That means trust, but verify.

I have my veto pen drawn and ready for any tax increase that Congress might even think of sending up. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day.

I have my veto pen drawn and ready for any tax increase that Congress might even think of sending up. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day.

We’re especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.

We’re especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.

In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, 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.

[ Referring to his younger opponent, Walter Mondale :] I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.

Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision it might be well if you would ask yourself: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

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

Who is John Galt?

It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in man.

The day is not purer than the depths of my heart.

You talk, you talk, that’s all you know how to do.

Outside of this cell we may have our oppressors, yes, but not inside. Here no one oppresses the other. The only thing that seems to disturb me . . . because I’m exhausted, or conditioned, or perverted . . . is that someone wants to be nice to me, without asking anything back for it.

Outside of this cell we may have our oppressors, yes, but not inside. Here no one oppresses the other. The only thing that seems to disturb me . . . because I’m exhausted, or conditioned, or perverted . . . is that someone wants to be nice to me, without asking anything back for it.

The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors.