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Who really said it

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem

Spoken by Ronald Reagan 1911–2004 · 40th President of the United States
Verified Free to reuse

Reagan said it in his First Inaugural Address, delivered on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on 20 January 1981, and the wording is confirmed sentence for sentence in the transcripts held by the Reagan Presidential Library ↗, the American Presidency Project ↗ and Yale’s Avalon Project ↗. What almost never survives the retelling are the first four words — “In this present crisis” — which tie the claim to the inflation and deficits he had just spent several paragraphs describing.

Last verified 3 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, Washington, D.C., 20 January 1981. Verified against the Reagan Presidential Library transcript. The popular short form drops the opening clause "In this present crisis."

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In context

Evoking the world of Ronald Reagan — 40th U.S. President · Governor of California, 1967–1975. Theme: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

Where the line comes from

Source
First Inaugural Address
Delivered
20 January 1981, West Front of the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Speaker
Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States
Drafted by
Kenneth Khachigian, Reagan’s chief White House speechwriter

They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. First Inaugural Address, 20 January 1981

Later in the same speech Reagan added: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government.”

Broadcast footage
Watch the passage as broadcast, American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Full transcript at the Reagan Presidential Library

How we verified it

  • The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library ↗ transcript of the 20 January 1981 address carries the sentence with its opening clause intact, followed immediately by “From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule.”
  • The American Presidency Project ↗ and Yale Law School’s Avalon Project ↗ print the identical wording, placed directly after Reagan’s passage on inflation, unemployment and deficits.
  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its sourced section for Reagan’s first term of office, citing the First Inaugural Address (1981).
  • Delivery is documented on film: the Library of Congress and GBH American Archive of Public Broadcasting ↗ hosts a broadcast clip of the passage from the 20 January 1981 coverage.
Public domain

The address is a work of the United States federal government, written and delivered in the President’s official capacity, so it carries no copyright in the United States — which is why full transcripts are published openly by the Reagan Presidential Library, Yale and Wikisource ↗, whose copy states that it “is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government.” Note that this is public domain by the federal-works rule, not by age: a 1981 speech by a private citizen would still be in copyright.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How the quote gets mangled

The attribution here is not in doubt — Reagan said these words, on the record, on camera. What goes wrong is the wording. The line is almost never quoted the way he actually delivered it.

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” Truncation

The opening clause “In this present crisis” is dropped so routinely that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation ↗ displays the shortened form on its own quotations page, attributed to the 1981 inaugural. Without those four words, a claim about one economic emergency reads as a permanent verdict on government itself.

“Government is not a solution to our problem…” Misquote

A widely reproduced variant swaps “the solution” for “a solution,” drops the opening clause, and cites no source document at all — as on AZQuotes ↗. Every archival transcript reads “the solution.”

Reagan, as a blanket anti-government slogan Out of context

Later in the very same address Reagan said: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government.” Both sentences sit in the one speech, as the Avalon Project transcript ↗ shows.

The genuine sentence, from the Reagan Presidential Library transcript ↗ of 20 January 1981, is: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Context

Why it mattered

Reagan took the oath on 20 January 1981 on the West Front of the Capitol — the first inauguration held on that side of the building ↗. The address spent its opening minutes on inflation, idle factories and decades of deficits before it reached the sentence everyone remembers, and that sequence is the whole point: “this present crisis” had a specific referent sitting directly above it in the text.

The speech was drafted by Kenneth Khachigian, who wrote Reagan’s inaugural address ↗ and his early economic speeches as chief White House speechwriter. The same address promised to “curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment” and, a little further on, insisted that abolishing government was not the aim at all — a balance the shortened slogan cannot hold.

“In this present crisis” — four words that turn a diagnosis into a doctrine the moment you delete them.

What was ‘this present crisis’?

The crisis Reagan named was economic. The paragraphs immediately preceding the line describe “the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history,” idle industries casting workers into unemployment, and decades of piling “deficit upon deficit” — all readable in sequence in the Avalon Project transcript ↗. Read in place, the sentence is an argument about how to end stagflation rather than a general theory of the state.

None of this makes the short version a fabrication — Reagan did say the words that get quoted. It makes it an edit, and an edit that changes the scope of the claim from one emergency to all of government.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Power Freedom Leadership

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Inaugural Address 1981 — full transcriptreaganlibrary.gov

The Reagan Presidential Library’s official text of the speech, carrying the sentence in full.
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981presidency.ucsb.edu

The American Presidency Project’s archival transcript at UC Santa Barbara.
First Inaugural Address of Ronald Reaganavalon.law.yale.edu

Yale Law School’s Avalon Project text — the best place to read the line inside its full paragraph run.
Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Addressen.wikisource.org

Free full text carrying the public-domain notice for works of the U.S. federal government.
Ronald Reagan — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote lists this line in its sourced section for Reagan’s first term, citing the 1981 inaugural.
Reagan Declares That “Government Is the Problem” (1981)americanarchive.org

Broadcast footage of the passage as delivered, from the Library of Congress and GBH archive.

The speaker

About Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

1911–2004 · 40th U.S. President · Governor of California, 1967–1975

Ronald Reagan came to politics late, after a career as a sports broadcaster and Hollywood film actor and two stints as president of the Screen Actors Guild. He was governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a practised broadcaster long before he was a candidate, and built his politics around sentences designed to be repeated — which is precisely why this one travels so easily without its opening clause.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address,” Washington, D.C., 20 January 1981, transcript, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum; also printed in the American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara) and the Avalon Project (Yale Law School).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem’?” Last verified 3 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/in-this-present-crisis-government-is-not-the-solution-to/

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