“I don't think we'll solve the problem of the deficit until three things happen: We need more discipline on spending in Congress. We need a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget. And we need to give our presidents a line-item veto.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Many countries of the world, I said, had constitutions, but in almost every case they were documents in which governments told their people what they could do. The United States had a constitution, I said, that was different from all the others because in it the people tell their government what it can do. Its three most important words are “We the people,” its most important principle, freedom.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Whatever his reasons, Gorbachev had the intelligence to admit Communism was not working, the courage to battle for change, and, ultimately, the wisdom to introduce the beginnings of democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise. As I said at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, the Soviet Union faced a choice: Either it made fundamental changes or it became obsolete. Gorbachev saw the handwriting on the Wall and opted for change.”
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Ronald Reagan
“We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief. Nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate."
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Ronald Reagan
“Democracy triumphed in the cold war because it was a battle of values—between one system that gave preeminence to the state and another that gave preeminence to the individual and freedom. Not long ago, I was told about an incident that illustrated this difference: An American scholar, on his way to the airport before a flight to the Soviet Union, got into a conversation with his cab driver, a young man who said that he was still getting his education. The scholar asked, “When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?” The young man answered, “I haven’t decided yet.” After the scholar arrived at the airport in Moscow, his cab driver was also a young man who happened to mention he was still getting his education, and the scholar, who spoke Russian, asked, “When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?” The young man answered: “They haven’t told me yet.”
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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.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Life is one grand sweet song so start the music”
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Ronald Reagan
“if there was any loose money lying around, the people in government would find a way to spend it. The worst sin in the bureaucracy was to give money back because it meant the bureaucracy’s budget could be reduced the following year. If at the end of the fiscal year they hadn’t spent all the money in their budget, there would be a rush to buy new office furniture, take a trip at the taxpayers’ expense, or spend the money on something else, just to assure their budget wouldn’t be smaller in the future. The idea of returning money to taxpayers once it had been collected from them had never come up before.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Later, several members of the Communist Party in Hollywood who had been involved in the attempted takeover went public and described in intimate detail how Moscow was trying to take over the picture business.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Jefferson repeatedly said that the best government was the smallest government, that “governments are not the masters of the people, but the servants of the people governed.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Someday, the realm of liberty and justice will encompass the planet. Freedom is not just the birthright of the few, it is the God-given right of all His children, in every country. It won't come by conquest. It will come, because freedom is right and freedom works. It will come, because cooperation and good will among free people will carry the day.”
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Ronald Reagan
“I thanked Nancy for what she had accomplished in her war against illegal drugs, but in my heart, I was really trying to say, “Thank you, Nancy, for everything; thank you for lighting up my life for almost forty years.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”
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Ronald Reagan
“You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
―
Ronald Reagan
