Ronald Reagan Quotes

A government role in our society should be inherently suspect …. There is something inherently coercive in the nature of government.

I would prefer the [USA] government to be the policeman and not the businessman.

The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn't much matter who controls it, because it can't do you much harm.

If the government controls your health care, the government controls you. Obamacare was never about health care. It was about government power, dependency, and control.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

Progressives think progress depends upon (that is, they sometimes define progress as) the concentration of power as high as possible in government’s regulatory apparatus.

There's a very good reason that governments aren't supposed to compete with private-enterprise companies. Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

My quarrel is not with the legitimate role of government but with the unlimited role of government.

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.

It's hard to argue with the government. Remember, they are they run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, so they must know a thing or two about satisfying women.

You see, that's the whole point of being in government. If you don't like something you simply make up a law that makes it illegal.

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.

I don't like the idea that the government has so much of a say in things.

Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies.

Government has ever been careful to hold a high hand over the education of the people. They know, better than anyone else, that their power is based almost entirely on the school. Hence, they monopolize it more and more.

A national education ought uniformly to be discouraged, on account of its obvious alliance with national government. This is an alliance of a more formidable nature than the old and much contested alliance of church and state.

The real needs of the people ought never give way to the imaginary wants of the state.

Can government really be active and, at the same time, limited? History suggests otherwise.

There is no force greater than the state force.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

The State has invariably shown a striking talent for the expansion of its powers beyond any limits that might be imposed upon it.

I start with a concern about the growth of federal government. I start with a perspective concerned about the growth of that power, and containing it within the bounds of the Constitution.