Ronald Reagan Quotes

Affirmative action is under attack today, not because it has failed, but because it succeeded.

The worst thing about affirmative action is that it encourages reverse discrimination, so-called because it goes in the opposite way of how we naturally discriminate.

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

How, then, can the feds justify favoring sons of Hispanics over sons of white Americans who fought in World War II or Vietnam?

What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.

I have supported affirmative action, I do support affirmative action and I will support affirmative action.

I disagree with the prevailing point of view of some black leaders that special treatment for blacks is acceptable.

When I call myself an affirmative action baby, I'm talking about the essence of what affirmative action was when it started.

Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach.

Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place.

The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.

I suspect that it would be impossible to arrange an affirmative action program in a racially neutral way and have it successful. To ask that this be so is to demand the impossible.

Racial preferences are dead. All that is required now is to give them a decent and honorable burial.

Blacks asked for equality. Republicans gave them affirmative action.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

If we could create the conditions that make racism difficult, or discourage it, then there would be less stress and less need for affirmative action programs. One of those conditions would be an economic policy that would create tight labor markets over long periods of time. Now does that mean that affirmative action is here only temporarily? I think the ultimate goal should be to remove it.

So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest

That is one of the reasons I oppose this whole Affirmative Action business. We are not supposed to be judged based on what our ancestors did or suffered. We are supposed to be judged as individuals, based on what we are able to achieve.

In those days [1955], affirmative action was for whites only. I might still be working for the grocery store in the small Texas town where I grew up were it not for affirmative action for Southern white boys.

If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.

I don't want affirmative action - too much affirmative, not enough action.

I was critical of race-based affirmative action early on in my career and I've changed my mind. And I've publicly acknowledged that I was wrong.

The argument that somehow we've got to get rid of minority scholarships so that we can have a free and fair America implies that we have a colorblind society where minorities are equal in their pursuit of funds to go to school.

I still favor alternatives to governmental race-based preferences.