“We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
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Ronald Reagan
“In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, “Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and avoidance of large federal deficits on the other; it is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, as long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance the budget—just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, the paradoxical truth is that the tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now.”
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Ronald Reagan
“If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement. ”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I heard one presidential candidate say that what this country needed was a president for the nineties. I was set to run again. I thought he said a president IN his nineties.”
―
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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“My assignment as the post’s adjutant and personnel officer (I ended the war a captain) put me in close contact with the civilian bureaucrats and it didn’t take long for me to decide I didn’t think much of the inefficiency, empire building, and business-as-usual attitude that existed in wartime under the civil service system. If I suggested that an employee might be expendable, his supervisor would look at me as if I were crazy. He didn’t want to reduce the size of his department; his salary was based to a large extent on the number of people he supervised. He wanted to increase it, not decrease it. I discovered it was almost impossible to remove an incompetent or lazy worker and that one of the most popular methods supervisors used in dealing with an incompetent was to transfer him or her out of his department to a higher-paying job in another department. We had a warehouse filled with cabinets containing old records that had no use or historic value. They were totally obsolete. Well, with a war on, there was a need for the warehouse and the filing cabinets, so a request was sent up through channels requesting permission to destroy the obsolete papers. Back came a reply—permission granted provided copies are made of each paper destroyed.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment’s would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“It seems to me that America is constantly reinventing what "America" means.”
―
Ronald Reagan
