"THE QUOTE VAULT"

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri."

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

"CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books."

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

"A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody."

"It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars."

"The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space."

"If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative."

"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."

"All great change in America begins at the dinner table."

"Coersion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him."

"Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States."

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit."

"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

"I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves."

"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting."

"I know in my heart that man is good.
That what is right will always eventually triumph.
And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

"If you're afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again."

"People don't start wars, governments do."

FROM THE GREAT, LATE PRESIDENT AND SUPER-HUMAN BEING, RONALD REAGAN, 1911-2004