Music legend Ray Charles, center, laughs as President Reagan and Nancy Reagan joined him at a salute to country music at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., on March 16, 1983. Charles died Thursday, June 10, 2004, a spokesman said. He was 73. (AP Photo/Ira Schwarz)

You won’t find a glowing tribute to President Reagan on this blog. He was a champion of liberty and free markets in words, but not in deeds or on principle. He may have hastened the end of the Cold War, but he certainly didn’t “win” it. I believe that his chief virtue is what many commentators call his “optimism.” What they leave out is what he was optimistic about – freedom and the moral certainty in American ideals, – as opposed to welfare statism and internaltional multilateralism. And now for the quotes:

From Ronald Reagan:

“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.”

“There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.”

“Let us beware that while Soviet rulers preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination over all the peoples of the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world…. I urge you to beware the temptation … to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”

From Ray Charles:

“I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.”

“Music was one of my parts… Like my blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me – like food or water.”

(On Addiction) “I did it to myself. It wasn’t society… it wasn’t a pusher, it wasn’t being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.”