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Reagan Page 2

But when has deciding to settle for a draw ever kept a bully from starting another fight?

I didn't desert my party. It deserted me. I looked up FDR's old platform, and I discovered that it called for a restoration of state's rights and a reduction in the national budget. You know what? I'm still for that.

Environmental extremists wouldn't let you build a house unless it looked like a bird's nest.

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

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.

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

There are a great many things that the state government should do that the federal government has no business doing.

People seem to think that all redwoods that are not protected through a national park will disappear. I'll be damned if I take away all this privately owned land for no reason.

I haven't had Jimmy Carter's experience. I wouldn't be caught dead with it.

You know, I think the best social program is a job.

When those who are governed do too little, those who govern can - and often will - do too much.

We have long since discovered that nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

I know what it's like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.

The best minds are not in government. If they were, business would hire them away.

But I do know that we've swallowed what I'd call the "Dr. Spock syndrome," wherein we question our own values and whether we have a right to impose our beliefs on our children. And in doing so, we've weakened the family.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few, but the universal right of all God's children.

Lenient judges are only lenient on crooks; they're very hard on society.

It's time...that we acknowledge [that] the solution to the crime problem will not be found in the social worker's files, the psychiatrist's noted, or the bureaucrat's budgets. It's a problem of the human heart; and it's there we must look for the answer.

Government does not produce revenue. It consumes it.

Well, God help us if a burglar prowling the street at night has a government guarantee that there is no gun in any home he may choose to enter.

History tells us that appeasement does not lead to peace. It invites an aggressor to test the will of a nation unprepared to meet that test. And… those who seemingly want peace the most, our young people, pay the heaviest price for our failure to maintain our strength.

My first summer job, when I was 14 years old, was for an outfit that bought up old houses and remodeled them. I started in digging foundations and hauling away debris, but before the summer was over I had laid hardwood floor, painted houses - everything that had to be done to remodel a place. At the end of each week, the boss reached in his pocket and paid me in cash. He didn't have to keep records of my hours, pay withholding and Social Security taxes for me, or provide workmen's compensation, health and life insurance, coffee breaks, and sterilized paper towels. The only person he had to pay for my labor was me, and that made me worth it to him.

Those young people [demand] the right to send blood to the enemy in Vietnam. I think they should be allowed to do that - providing they send it in the original container.

There is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them

The Constitution was never conceived as a shield for degeneracy. You start out burning the flag and you end up burning Detroit.

Sometimes our right hand doesn't know what our far right hand is doing.

Why should we be taking social security taxes from the pay of a teenager working part-time? Why, other than to feed government's greed? It certainly has nothing to with the teenager's welfare.

There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.

Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.

You won't get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There's only one way to get real gun control: Disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up, and if you don't actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time.

My erstwhile associated in organized labor at the top level of the AFL-CIO assail me as a "strident voice of the right wing lunatic fringe." Sadly I have come to realize that a great many so-called liberals aren't liberal - they will defend to the death your right to agree with them.

If America is to remain what God in His wisdom intended for it to be--a refuge, a safe haven for those seeking human rights--then we must once again extend the most basic human right to the most vulnerable members of the human family. We must commit ourselves to a future in which the right to life for every human being--no matter ho weak, no matter how small, no matter, how defenseless--is protected by our laws and public policy.

Maybe the trouble with those professional "women's libbers" I mentioned earlier is related to something Will Rogers once said, "If women go on trying to be more and more equal to men, some day they won't know any more than men do."

One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the Government run it.

It is the responsibility of the government, at point of bayonet if necessary, to see that every citizen gets their Constitutional individual rights and is not denied them by any group or individuals.

America's best days lie ahead. You ain't see nothing yet.

As I learned, professional burglars seldom carry guns themselves, and would be overjoyed if no one else did either.

"...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.'"
Ronald Reagan -- "A Time for Choosing"

We should never forget that women are the civilizing influence of our society. If it weren't for women, men would still be carrying clubs. You can easily observe the coarseness that comes over a group of men removed, for any reason, from the feminine influence.

If you look back you find that those great social reforms really didn't work. They didn't cure unemployment. They didn't cure social problems. What came from them was a group of people who became entrenched in Government who wanted social reforms just for the sake of social reforms.

We've heard a great deal about Republican fat cats - how the Republicans are the party of big contributions. 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.

It is time to realize that profit, property and freedom are inseparable. You cannot have any one of them without the others.

I've been criticized for going over the heads of Congress…. So what's the fuss? A lot of things go over their heads.

I sometimes wonder what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had to run them through a Democratic legislature.

Yes, deficits are a problem. I've been saying so for more than a quarter of a century now. But the problem is not the size of the deficit, it's the size of government's claim on our economy.

It is [another] fact of human nature: When a person owns assets -- a house, land, a small business or shares of stock in a big one -- he or she will look after those assets.

Already, the hour is late, government has laid it hands on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an ever increasing degree interferes with the people's right to know.

Once upon a time, the only contact with government was when you went to buy a stamp.