Ronald Reagan - Government Quotes

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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
Deficits, as I've often said, aren't caused by too little taxing, they're caused by too much spending. Presidents can't appropriate a dollar of tax payers money, only Congressmen can; and Congress is susceptible to all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with good government.

Ronald Reagan
Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.

Ronald Reagan
Respect for human rights is not social work; it is not merely an act of compassion. It is the first obligation of government and the source of its legitimacy.

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
The best view of big government is in the rearview mirror as we leave it behind.

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

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
In some dim beginning, man created the institution of government as a convenience for himself. And, ever since that time, government has been doing its best to become an inconvenience.

Ronald Reagan
Either you will control your government, or government will control you.

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
When the commander in chief of a nation finds it necessary to order employees of the government or agencies of the government to do things that would technically break the law, he has to be able to declare it legal in order for them to do that.

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
Are you entitled to the fruits of your own labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?

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
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
When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself.

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

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
Although I held public office for a total of sixteen years, I also thought of myself as a citizen-politician, not a career one. Every now and then when I was in government, I would remind my associates that "When we start thinking of government as 'us' instead of 'them,' we've been here too long." By that I mean that elected officeholders need to retain a certain skepticism about the perfectibility of government.

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