“The press is dying to paint me as now trying to undo the New Deal. I remind them I voted for F.D.R. 4 times. I’m trying to undo the “Great Society.” It was L.B.J.’s war on poverty that led to our present mess.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Doing for people what they can, and ought to do for themselves, is a dangerous experiment,” the great labor leader Samuel Gompers said. “In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends on their own initiative.” The classic “liberal” believed individuals should be masters of their own destiny and the least government is the best government; these are precepts of freedom and self-reliance that are at the root of the American way and the American spirit.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Deficits, as I’ve often said, aren’t caused by too little taxing, they are caused by too much spending. Presidents don’t create deficits, Congress does. Presidents can’t appropriate a dollar of taxpayers’ money; only congressmen can—and Congress is susceptible to all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with good government.”
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Ronald Reagan
“We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.”
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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
“A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at? ”
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Ronald Reagan
“Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Preparing for the future must begin, as always, with our children. We need to set for them new and more rigorous goals.”
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Ronald Reagan
“They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where — because of our past excesses — it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don't believe that. And, I don't believe you do either. That is why I am seeking the presidency. I cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity. I don't agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to other hands. I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world.”
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Ronald Reagan
“The key for any speaker is to establish his own point of view for the audience, so they can see the game through his eyes.”
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Ronald Reagan
“We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”
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Ronald Reagan
“The Democrats in the legislature agreed with us that welfare costs were headed for the stratosphere but claimed the solution was a huge tax increase—in other words, to keep pouring more money into a bucket that was full of holes.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”
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Ronald Reagan
