Ronald Reagan - Government Quotes

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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
Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.

Ronald Reagan
Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time."

Ronald Reagan
Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

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
"We the people" tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. "We the people" are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which "We the people" tell the government what it is allowed to do. "We the people" are free.

Ronald Reagan
Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's "bold new imaginative" program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx — first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his "State Socialism" and way before him it was "benevolent monarchy."

Ronald Reagan
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Ronald Reagan
Outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or economically as the private sector.

Ronald Reagan
Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

Ronald Reagan
One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.

Ronald Reagan
The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a healthy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

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
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
History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

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
Talk is cheap — except when Congress does it. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

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
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
All of us should remember that the federal government is not some mysterious institution comprised of buildings, files and paper. The people are the government. What we create we ought to be able to control.

Ronald Reagan