Ronald Reagan Quotes
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin-just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain.
Reagan, Ronald. "A Time for Choosing." Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, National Archives and Records Administration, 27 Oct. 1964.
Song traditionally sung at the end of British Labour Party meetings
This line was used in the WPA Federal Theater Project. The play was closed down, because the State Department was distressed that the Federal Theater quoting heads of State might be insulting to the world leaders. Mussolini was another character in the play and he was depicted as the boorish thug that he turned out to be. It was that which offended the government officials who closed the show before it could open. FDR used a similar line 6 years later. See {32529} . Dolores Ibarruri in the Spanish Civil War is quoted with a similar phrase at about the same time. See {604321}
The first two lines of the song became the slogan a few years later of veterans of the Normandy invasion of WWII.
He was never shot by the people, but executed after a military coup.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989 and became a highly influential voice of modern conservatism. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975.
