The Best of Ronald Reagan’s Quotes Part 2

The taxpayer – that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take a civil-service exam.

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.

Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.

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.

If I could paraphrase a well-known statement by Will Rogers that he never met a man he didn’t like – I’m afraid we have some people around here who never met a tax they didn’t like.

Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes. (Said during a radio microphone test, 1984)

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 will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them — this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved good-bye, and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God. (Speech about the Challenger disaster).

Republicans believe every day is 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15.

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.

The best social program is a productive job for anyone who’s willing to work.

Excellence demands competition. Without a race there can be no champion, no records broken, no excellence–in education or in any other walk of life.

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.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

We’re the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

I hope we have once again 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.

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

I hope you’re all Republicans. (to surgeons as he entered the operating room following his assassination attempt)

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 1980s 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.

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