Ronald Reagan - Government Quotes

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Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Ronald Reagan
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Ronald Reagan
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Ronald Reagan
I'm convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less than to live our own lives according to our values — at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

Ronald Reagan
If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.

Ronald Reagan
Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.

Ronald Reagan
We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth.

Ronald Reagan
Some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.

Ronald Reagan
We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process.

Ronald Reagan
Yes, deficits are a problem. I've been saying so for more than a quarter of a century now. But the problem is not the size of the deficit, it's the size of government's claim on our economy.

Ronald Reagan
For three decades, we have sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.

Ronald Reagan
I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

Ronald Reagan
Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.

Ronald Reagan
Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive

Ronald Reagan
Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Ronald Reagan
We don't need more politicians insisting we have deficits because you're not taxed enough. Those deficits ballooned from an economy that didn't grow enough and from 50 years of government spending too much.

Ronald Reagan
I have always thought of government as a kind of organism with an insatiable appetite for money, whose natural state is to grow forever unless you do something to starve it.

Ronald Reagan
Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.

Ronald Reagan
Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work - work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

Ronald Reagan
Dreams became issues of East versus West. Hopes became political rhetoric. Progress became a search for power and domination. Somewhere the truth was lost that people don't make war, governments do.

Ronald Reagan
History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness.

Ronald Reagan
It doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?

Ronald Reagan
We must remove government's smothering hand from where it does harm; we must seek to revitalize the proper functions of government. We do these things to set loose again the energy and the ingenuity of the American people. We do these things to reinvigorate those social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the individual and the state - and which remain the real source of our progress as a people.

Ronald Reagan
Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted, it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy.

Ronald Reagan
The taxpayer—that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take a Civil Service examination.

Ronald Reagan
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

Ronald Reagan
We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down.

Ronald Reagan
You can't be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.

Ronald Reagan
We in government should learn to look at our country with the eyes of the entrepreneur, seeing possibilities where others see only problems

Ronald Reagan
When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long.

Ronald Reagan