Watch this video before you read the speech text excerpts:
August 12, 1986 Speech by Ronald Raegan (As US President)
I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.
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August 15, 1986 Speech by Ronald Raegan (As US President)
It's wonderful to be having this White House Conference on Small Business again after almost 6 years. Things certainly have changed in the meantime. Back then, 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. [Laughter]
Well, with your help, I think we've turned all that around. We cut taxes. We squashed inflation. We brought interest rates down, threw out needless regulations, setting the economy on a growth path that has created somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million new jobs in under 4 years. Now, most people know that history. What isn't widely enough recognized, however, is the leading role of entrepreneurs and small businesses in our ongoing expansion.
According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses account for nearly half of all the innovations and over 70 percent of all those new jobs -- you heard right, over 70 percent.
But it's individuals and small firms who are on the cutting edge of growth and technological development. It's entrepreneurs with a new idea or a different approach, visionaries with an impossible dream and the determination to make it happen -- these are the people who are propelling our economy forward. And the best way to keep up the momentum is to give them the freedom they need by cutting tax rates -- and then cutting them again.
1967 Speech as Governor of California
Perhaps you and I have lived too long with this miracle to properly be appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.