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Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater (January 1, 1909 - May 29, 1998) American politician; United States Senator
Sourced:
- The world will not greet you with open arms, but with a clenched fist.
- Speaking as a Phoenix, Arizona city councilman to the 1950 graduating class at the segregated Carver High School
- Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
- I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
- Acceptance Speech as the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate. Variants and derivatives that are often quoted include:
- Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.
- Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
- Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.
- My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.
- When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.
- The Washington Post (July 28, 1994)
- I said one day that Dole had a temper, and he got madder than hell. He has one. He has a mean one.
- The Washington Post (July 28, 1994)
- The best thing Clinton could do— I think I wrote him a letter about this, but I'm not sure— is to shut up.... He has no discipline.
- About President Bill Clinton The Washington Post (July 28, 1994); in the same article, speaking about former Goldwater supporter Hillary Clinton he states: "If he'd let his wife run business, I think he'd be better off."
- "The most dishonest man we ever had in the presidency."
- Speaking of his political rival Lyndon Johnson The Washington Post (July 28, 1994), he also used similar descriptions when speaking of Richard Nixon
Attributed:
- A goverment that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
- Variant: Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
- A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
- After one of his long-winded harangues I suggested he had probably been vaccinated with a phonograph needle. He responded by saying that I would have been a great success in the movies working for Eighteenth Century-Fox. ** Speaking of Hubert Humphrey
- American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.
- And here we encounter the seeds of government disaster and collapse— the kind that wrecked ancient Rome and every other civilization that allowed a sociopolitical monster called the welfare state to exist.
- Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.
- I don't think there was any Reagan revolution. This country is based, its economy is based, on free enterprise. The government's based on a constitutional democracy. And all Reagan did was to continue what Harry Truman did and George Washington started.
- I will offer a choice, not an echo.
- I won't say that the papers misquote me, but I sometimes wonder where Christianity would be today if some of those reporters had been Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
- I wouldn't trust Nixon from here to that phone.
- If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.
- It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.
- It's political Daddyism and it's as old as demagogues and despotism.
- Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world.
- Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.
- Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
- Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.
- Sex and politics are a lot alike. You don't have to be good at them to enjoy them.
- The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
- However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'
- Possible Source: Congressional Record, September 16, 1981?
- To disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable.
- To insist on strength is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering.
- When I'm not a politician, I'll be dead.
- You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.
- I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass.
Quotes about Barry Goldwater
- In your heart you know he's right.
- 1964 Presidential Campaign slogan, countered by Democrats with: "In your guts, you know he's nuts."
- Unlike nearly every other politician who ever lived, anywhere in the world, Barry Goldwater always said exactly what was on his mind. He spared his listeners nothing.
- Washington Post Staff writer Lloyd Grove (May 30, 1998)
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