The Republican tent has grown over the last 4 decades. It now includes fiscal conservatives and moderates, social conservatives and moderates, conservatives, moderates and libertarians. The tent has grown and Republicans have forgotten Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”
Here are more quotes by my political hero, Ronaldus Magnus
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other.
A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.
A people free to choose will always choose peace.
Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.
All great change in America begins at the dinner table.
All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.
Although the political landscape has changed, the bold ideas of the 1980’s are alive and well. Republican candidates swept every major election across the country last year… and as a result, it seems that our opponents have finally realized how unpopular liberalism really is. So now they’re trying to dress their liberal agenda in a conservative overcoat
Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.
Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.
Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.
But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.
Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
Don’t be afraid to see what you see.
Double, no triple, our troubles and we’d still be better off than any other people on earth. It is time that we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause.
Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. Facts are stubborn things.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.
Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions.
Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.
Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Government is the people’s business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.
Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom. What brought America back? The American people brought us back — with quiet courage and common sense; with undying faith that in this nation under God the future will be ours, for the future belongs to the free.
Government has an important role in helping develop a country’s economic foundation. But the critical test is whether government is genuinely working to liberate individuals by creating incentives to work, save, invest, and succeed.
Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.
Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector’s share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
How can a president not be an actor?
How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
However, our task is far from over. Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Listening to the liberals, you’d think that the 1980’s were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They’re claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there.
I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.
I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.
I couldn’t help but say to Mr. Gorbachev just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. We’d find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.
I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.
I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.
I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.
I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.
I know I’m not in government anymore. In fact I’m out of work.
I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.
I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon.
I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign.
I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience. -during a 1984 presidential debate with Walter Mondale
I will stand on, and continue to use, the figures I have used, because I believe they are correct. Now, I’m not going to deny that you don’t now and then slip up on something; no one bats a thousand.
I’ve never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a ‘fat cat’ and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a ‘public-spirited philanthropist’.
I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.
If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what’s at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.
If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement. If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.
If you’re afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again.
If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.
In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis — a crisis where the demands of the economic order are colliding directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union…. [Communism will be] left on the ash heap of history.
In Israel, free men and women are every day demonstrating the power of courage and faith. Back in 1948 when Israel was founded, pundits claimed the new country could never survive. Today, no one questions that. Israel is a land of stability and democracy in a region of tyranny and unrest.
Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.
Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.
It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history…. [It is] the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism- Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.
It was leadership here at home that gave us strong American influence abroad, and the collapse of imperial Communism. Great nations have responsibilities to lead, and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile, because they might just wind up lowering our flag.
It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.
It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, “We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.” This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance? Let us ask ourselves; “What kind of people do we think we are?”
Let us beware that while they [Soviet rulers] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination over all the peoples of the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world…. I urge you to beware the temptation … to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.
Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.
Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.
Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.
My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose – somehow we win out.
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!
No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.
Now, as most of you know, I’m not one for looking back. I figure there will be plenty of time for that when I get old. But rather, what I take from the past is inspiration for the future, and what we accomplished during our years at the White House must never be lost amid the rhetoric of political revisionists.
Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
Our forbearance should never be misunderstood.
Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act.
Peace is not the absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.
People do not make wars; governments do.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, “What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.” But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his
Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.
Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’.
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.
The Democrats may remember their lines, but how quickly they forget the lessons of the past. I have witnessed five major wars in my lifetime, and I know how swiftly storm clouds can gather on a peaceful horizon.
The next time a Saddam Hussein takes over Kuwait, or North Korea brandishes a nuclear weapon, will we be ready to respond? In the end, it all comes down to leadership, and that is what this country is looking for now.
The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.
The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
The neutron warhead is a defensive weapon designed to offset the great superiority that the Soviet Union has on the western front against the NATO nations.
The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.
The poet called Miss Liberty’s torch, “the lamp beside the golden door.” Well, that was the entrance to America, and it still is. And now you really know why we’re here tonight. The glistening hope of that lamp is still ours. Every promise every opportunity is still golden in this land. And through that golden door our children can walk into tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can be denied the promise that is America. Her heart is full; her torch is still golden, her future bright. She has arms big enough to comfort and strong enough to support, for the strength in her arms is the strength of her people. She will carry on in the eighties unafraid, unashamed, and unsurpassed. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America’s is.
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
The taxpayer – that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.
The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.
The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas – a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.
The United Sates has much to offer the third world war.
The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization.
The West will not contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we’ll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.
There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that “the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals.” And he said, “There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.’ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.
This fellow they’ve nominated claims he’s the new Thomas Jefferson. Well let me tell you something; I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine and Governor… You’re no Thomas Jefferson! Republican National Convention, 1992
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world’s strongest economy.
To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.
Today we did what we had to do.
They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.
Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.
Trust, but verify.
We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments.
We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.
We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.
We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one!
We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.
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.
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him. . . . But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure.
We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.
We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success — only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.
We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free. We’re in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country.
We’ve done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren’t just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.
Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.
Well, I learned a lot… I went down to Latin America to find out from them and (learn) their views. You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries.
What makes him think a middle-aged actor, who’s played with a chimp, could have a future in politics? – on Clint Eastwood’s bid to become mayor of Carmel
What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.
Whatever time I’ve got left now belongs to the Big Fella Upstairs.
When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well ladies and gentleman, I’d follow the example of their nominee; don’t inhale. Republican National Convention, 1992.
While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future. Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.
Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we’re always “against,” never “for” anything.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”
You can tell a lot about a fella’s character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful. –explaining why he liked to have a jar of jelly beans on hand for important meetings
You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we’re in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we’ve got to do something about the unemployed.
