“Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.”
―
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.”
―
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.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Whatever his reasons, Gorbachev had the intelligence to admit Communism was not working, the courage to battle for change, and, ultimately, the wisdom to introduce the beginnings of democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise. As I said at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, the Soviet Union faced a choice: Either it made fundamental changes or it became obsolete. Gorbachev saw the handwriting on the Wall and opted for change.”
―
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
“Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen. ”
―
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
“Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”
―
Ronald Reagan
“Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”
―
Ronald Reagan
