Quote #6

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals - if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can't say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy.

More from Ronald Reagan

  1. One legislator accused me of having a nineteenth-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an eighteenth-ce…
  2. There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek t…
  3. If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer.
  4. Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the earl…
  5. Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.
  6. I'm convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children;…
  7. Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
  8. Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

All Ronald Reagan quotes