Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
775
AUTHOR:
Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911–2004)
QUOTATION:
Government is like a big baby—an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
ATTRIBUTION:
RONALD REAGAN, governor of California, joke during 1965 campaign for governor.—The Reagan Wit, ed. Bill Adler, p. 30 (1981). Quoted lacking “sense of” in The New York Times Magazine, November 14, 1965, p. 174, as a typical wisecrack.
