"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Presidents of the United StatesTelevision personalitiesActors from IllinoisRadio personalitiesAutobiographers from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Later variant: Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again. — California Gubernatorial Inauguration Speech (5 January 1967)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"Well, from here I will go to Bonn and then Berlin, where there stands a grim symbol of power untamed. The Berlin Wall…"
"President Reagan is a man with a very special sense of religion. Reagan sees a proper role for government and a prope…"
"Reagan pulled together the Republican Party’s free-market optimists, ultraright libertarians, family-values moralists…"
"I don’t want to be controversial, but I do see that under Ronald Reagan and Bush’s administration there was a fantasy…"
"I would think to myself [...] that the battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War …"
"When Reagan was nominated in 1966 by the Republicans it marked a qualitative turn for the worse in California and nat…"
"What do you do when your President ignores all the palpable, relevant facts and wanders in circles?"
"[A] lapse into fiscal indiscipline on a scale never before experienced in peacetime."
"He [Reagan] demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to pu…"
"President Reagan was the Churchill of his era. His commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and his boun…"