Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.”
―
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
“We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
―
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
“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
“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”
―
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 is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
―
Ronald Reagan
