First, America must maintain our record of fiscal responsibility.
Third, we must remember that America cannot lead in the world unless here at home we weave the threads of our coat of many colors into the fabric of one America.
– Bill Clinton, Farewell Address, 18 January 2001
But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation—from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.
For them, the great rediscovery of the 1980s has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical way of government: Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.
I 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.
If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are.
– Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address, 11 January 1989
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