“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!”
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Ronald Reagan
“I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, 'We must broaden the base of our party'- when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents”
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Ronald Reagan
“As I have often said, governments don’t produce economic growth, people do.”
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Ronald Reagan
“But Nancy is right—Presidents don’t have vacations—they just have a change of scenery”
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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
“For years, I’ve heard the question: “How could an actor be president?” I’ve sometimes wondered how you could be president and not be an actor.”
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Ronald Reagan
“We do not deny any nation's legitimate interest in security. But protecting the security of one nation by robbing another of its national independence and national traditions is not legitimate. In the long run, it is not even secure.”
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Ronald Reagan
“I believe with all my heart that standing up for America means standing up for the God who has so blessed our land. We need God’s help to guide our nation through stormy seas. But we can’t expect Him to protect America in a crisis if we just leave Him over on the shelf in our day-to-day living. Speech, New Orleans, November 16, 1982”
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Ronald Reagan
“Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Welfare was taking away the very thing that people needed most—the initiative to provide for themselves. At the same time it was undermining the family: Teenagers from the inner cities, who for various reasons decided they didn’t want to live at home anymore, discovered that by getting pregnant—they didn’t even have to wait for their baby to be born—they got a welfare check that allowed them to rent their own apartment, and they discovered they could increase their monthly welfare check any time they chose simply by getting pregnant again. Meanwhile, the father of the child might have a good job and want to live with his family. But he was told his family was better off financially if he walked out on them; if he stayed, they wouldn’t get a welfare check. Not only was the welfare program a tax-financed incentive for immorality that was destroying the family, it was responsible for an endless and malignant cycle of despair in which generation after generation went on the dole and never had any incentive to leave it.”
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Ronald Reagan
“Ran “Inchon”—it is a brutal but gripping picture about the Korean War and for once we’re the good guys & the Communists are the villains. The producer was Japanese or Korean which probably explains the preceding sentence.”
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Ronald Reagan
“The following morning, when I met for breakfast with the staff, we kept noisy music playing loudly on a tape recorder as a precaution against hidden microphones. It was a good thing we did: Later, we found five listening devices hidden in our rooms in the guesthouse. One staffer unscrewed a plate over the light switch in his room, discovered a bug, removed it, and took it home as a souvenir.”
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Ronald Reagan
“We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
―
Ronald Reagan
