Here are a few quotes for you to ponder.
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
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, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
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.
Man is not free unless government is limited.
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!
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.
All of us should remember that the Federal Government is not some mysterious institution comprised of buildings, files, and paper. The people are the government. What we create we ought to be able to control.
We are learning that the way to prosperity is not more bureaucracy and redistribution of wealth but less government and more freedom for the entrepreneur and for the creativity of the individual.
The federal government has taken on functions it was never intended to perform and which it does not perform well. There should be a planned, orderly transfer of such functions to states and communities and a transfer with them of the sources of taxation to pay for them.
Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.
We are going to put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exists to fund the federal government. The federal government exists to serve the American people.
Here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted to it by we the people.
I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose.
America must remain freedom’s staunchest friend, for freedom is our best ally and it is the world’s only hope to conquer poverty and preserve peace.
The Founding Fathers established a nation under God, ruled not by arbitrary decrees of kings or the whims of entrenched elites but by the consent of the governed. Theirs was the vision of a striving, God-fearing, self-reliant people living in the sunlight of justice and breathing the bracing air of liberty.
We are taxing ourselves into economic exhaustion and stagnation, crushing our ability and incentive to save, invest and produce. This must stop.
There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.
Our Founding Fathers devised a system of government unique in all the world – a federation of sovereign States, with as much law and decision-making authority as possible kept at the local level.
When we deprive people of what they have earned, or take away their jobs, we destroy their dignity and undermine their families.
Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer. It´s so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come true. The fact is, bureaucracies are a problem around the world.
I think the best possible social program is a job.
The size of the Federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive, [it] reeks with injustice and is fundamentally un-American… it has earned a rebellion and it’s time we rebelled.
The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.
Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.
Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself. … 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.
Republicans believe the best way to assure prosperity is to generate more jobs. The Democrats believe in more welfare.
I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less than to live our own lives according to our values — at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.
Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.
These quotes make it perfectly clear that Reagan was all about small government and that is something the Republican elites have strayed away from, including you.