Ronald Reagan Quotes

The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives

In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.

One of the worst of errors would be the general admission of the proposition that a Government has no right to interfere for any purpose except for that of affording protection.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

The government is already into our lives a whole lot more than they should be. If I were president, I'd roll everything back. Everything!

I'm saying the federal government is taking away the freedom of Americans to make choices.

Whenever regulation increases, personal freedom decreases.

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm—as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Government does not exist to protect us from ourselves.

I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.

The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything.

And since our country's founding, we've tried to keep government's heavy hand out of our personal lives, while ensuring that we do the most important thing, which is to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

If we're free to do what we want, why does government always have a plan for us?

In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.

Government should do only those things the people cannot do for themselves.

Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway?... If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible.

When taxes are too high, people go hungry. When the government is too intrusive, people lose their spirit. Act for the people's benefit. Trust them; leave them alone.

Individual liberty, the basic underpinning of American society, requires constant defense against the encroachment of the state.

I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

I've given birth to five babies and I breastfed every single one of these babies. To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies. You wanna talk about the nanny state? I think we just got the new definition of a nanny.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

We just simply want to get back to basics, get - restore essentially the constitutional foundation of the country, and that means the federal government becoming less onerous, less involved in every - basically every item of our lives. And what that means is there does have to be some transition.