“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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“I learned that hard work is an essential part of life—that by and large, you don’t get something for nothing—and that America was a place that offered unlimited opportunity to those who did work hard. I learned to admire risk takers and entrepreneurs, be they farmers or small merchants, who went to work and took risks to build something for themselves and their children, pushing at the boundaries of their lives to make them better. I have always wondered at this American marvel, the great energy of the human soul that drives people to better themselves and improve the fortunes of their families and communities. Indeed, I know of no greater force on earth.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Life is one grand sweet song so start the music”
―
Ronald Reagan
“It is up to us in our time to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.
―
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
“In a country ruled by laws, it seemed to me that nothing was more important than removing politics from the process of choosing judges. During previous administrations in California, governors had often handed out judgeships to friends and cronies like prizes at a company picnic. Not only had this produced a lot of inferior judges, it had placed a number of partisans on the bench who believed that putting on the black robes of a judge gave them a license to rewrite the laws. I wanted judges who would interpret the Constitution, not rewrite it.”
―
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
“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.”
―
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
“There are no such things as limits to growth, because there
are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence,
imagination, and wonder.”
―
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
